well um welcome everybody who is uh joining us online we appreciate you being here this afternoon um we are excited to have this first uh round of strategy uh presentation from development strategies today i'd like to start out and say uh thank you to the steering committee who's uh done a lot of work uh throughout the process to get to this point and um more importantly thanks to uh all of you in the public who have uh participated by filling out surveys and uh participating in in focus groups we got a really good participation and really a good feedback um so with that i'm going to turn it over to uh development strategies and our our team um we have matt wetley justin carney and miriam keller with us uh tonight and uh so take it away great um thank you bob and um looking at uh justin miriam can you can you see my screen can everyone see that's great fantastic great well um thank you uh everyone um and welcome to the town hall strategy presentation uh for the city of clemson um we're gonna take about an hour here today um we'll be recording this video um and so people can watch it again or share it uh watch it at their leisure and we will have uh a survey that follows this so it really will continue to need your participation in this and we want to thank you all for your attendance today so um i want to share a little bit first about where we are in the process then we want to really frame the strategy the why you're going to see in this presentation a number of strategies that we feel respond to um the feedback we got um in a previous survey through stakeholder input working with a steering committee and this is our opportunity to present those strategies to you so that you can then respond and tell us if we're hitting the mark so we will be presenting those strategies uh and on number three here uh but number two is really explaining why uh with those strategies so here's the process to date um and we're basically at the tail end of step two here so we um step one was really the understand phase where uh we did our analysis and we created a whole series of videos that i think got 3 000 uh survey responses so just a just an incredible turnout from this community and we took that feedback and we've gone about creating strategies over the past a couple of months and we're going to put those in front of you all today we're going to post this online and we need you to tell us what you think because um because that's where we are in the process and from there we're going to take that feedback and further refine these before we make our final recommendations and report to uh to counsel in the form of a white paper so we appreciate your continued involvement in this and and it's absolutely crucial that we hear from you all now a little refresher this is a strategic plan and why do a strategic plan well every city has a finite amount of time uh money and energy uh to invest in itself and um great communities are defined by the wisdom of the choices that they make uh in how they expend these and the strategic plan is really about asking the community where do you want to go and what are the best ways to invest time money and energy to get there and this isn't unique just to cities all organizations need to do a strategic plan from time to time institutions corporations small businesses foundations nonprofits everyone from time to time needs to say hey the world outside us is changing and we need to figure out how we want to adapt and fit within that new reality and um that has involved necessarily a dialogue where we're sharing our thoughts as planners helping you see things through our eyes uh and you all through surveys or stakeholder interviews have shared with us your experiences through your eyes uh in in in about your community about clemson and where we'll need to work is thinking about work towards is prioritization of strategies and how to best adapt to change now a lot of work's been underway uh from the city has been a number of plans um and just a few of which include a comprehensive plan updates and a downtown corridor study and a bikeway plan and the green crescent crescent trail plan uh there's been a number of efforts uh that have happened or are underway or are slated to happen um to invest in your community and um all of these are really consistent with uh the strategies that you're going to hear us put forward and um the degree to which these can be advanced will will also advance a lot of the strategies and the goals and objectives that are expressed in this plan and those include things aimed at creating a more inclusive community creating a better place better quality of life and creating a more resilient community what brought us here what created this plan in the beginning was growth and this community has experienced what is for it uh an unprecedented amount of it and where we need to end is making specific land use recommendations what we want to do is in this process over these six months is understand that growth understand the forces that shape it and ultimately make land use recommendations that are more uh that make this community more in line with what people want and make it more inclusive uh more resilience and possessing of a higher quality of place we've asked a number of questions along the way do we have to grow why are we growing how much are we growing uh and we made videos around inclusivity around place and quality of life and resiliency we heard from you um what you wanted and what your priorities were at this so now it's time to ask these questions where do we want to grow and how do we want to do it these are the critical questions now yeah so like matt said um we've had the benefit of many conversations with the steering committee uh with the public and the survey uh where we heard from uh it was almost 1000 unique participants in that survey process so really got a very broad participation in that um and there's too much to share in the context of this presentation we'll be posting more details um on the website about the survey results but we want to share some of the big priorities that stood out to us that are shaping um kind of the strategies that have risen to the top and what we'll be presenting today on the next slide you'll see as it relates to inclusivity when we ask among all the different aspects of inclusivity that are important that could be important to clemson what rises to the top of the list and you can see these top three priorities there so you're preventing displacement in communities of color um second improving housing quality and stability in lower income neighborhoods to contribute to a higher quality of life in all of clemson's neighborhoods and third expanding affordable options so people who live and you know work in clemson clemson's essential workforce have access to quality housing choices in the community when it comes to place and quality of life traffic and limiting the impacts on traffic of new development is a clear uh priority right at the top of the list and we heard a lot about that as well talking to all of you in the roundtable discussions and with the steering committee second really preserving and enhancing downtown and third just how important um pedestrian and bike accessibility and infrastructure will be as part of quality of life but also as a strategy for mitigating the growth and traffic as the community grows and then thinking about resiliency supporting local distinct authentic businesses uh downtown and its forefronts really a clear priority um second supporting more innovation and startups and research in the community to diversify the economy um also stood out as a priority and third lesson but definitely still in the mix of the idea of creating more of a brand or identity for the city of clemson independent from the university and establishing the community as a destination to attract more visitors throughout the year um including as a means to generate more retail spending potential and fill some of those those storefronts and so that's just a quick summary we'll be posting more detailed survey results and tonight i want to encourage everybody who has a comment to share that in the chat box we won't be uh having a live q a part of this but we'll be using the all of the the chat conversation which justin will be kind of keeping an eye on and moderating we'll be using all of that to refine um all of the strategy work as we move forward in addition to the survey responses from this next survey we'll be posting so now i want to frame the strategy and what i mean by framing as i said is we're going to present to you what the strategies are and we want to hear back from you on what you think about those but first we want to take a minute to explain why we created these strategies because i think for some um it requires a shift in thinking about what really makes communities thrive and how to approach it and we're here to tell you that some of the some of the conventional strategies that cities have used when confronted with growth likely won't work but there are strategies that will and we want to share with you uh what they are and why so what we're talking about at its essence is growth and change and these are some of the hardest things uh to address for any community because it's existential what are we growing into and what do we want to become um the reality is communities must continually evaluate how to adapt in order to flourish because change is all around us now one of the things we talked about in our video is some of our videos and analysis and shared with you is the future growth that's coming and we're here to tell you that it's going to be significant um this was a study done by upstate forever a few years back that looked not only at clemson but also greenville spartanburg the whole upstate region and this is the amount of land developed in 2015 and under current growth patterns this is what it's going to look like by 2040 virtually under current land use patterns which are largely single-family there will be no land left between these communities no farmland um it's going to get developed out because there's a incredible rate of growth in this region and that's going to produce a lot more traffic we heard from you all that traffic's a big concern and we want to tell you uh and be upfront with you and be very honest with you as a community that traffic pressures are going to continue to increase and that growth is going to continue to increase and it is largely out of your control as a community the factors driving growth have a lot to do with being in one of the most rapidly growing economic regions uh in the country located between charlotte and atlanta it has to do with having a flagship university and the rise of flagship universities in general and it has to do with being adjacent to greenville and the growth that it's experiencing um these are the things that aren't in your control um but and in addition to that we've done some um we've done some projections of future growth both student and non-student economic growth both uh university-based and non-university-based and it's substantial um our projections are for the next 10 years uh based on the factors that we've looked at that growth could accelerate uh decades from now and so your reality clemson is that growth is coming and the real question is how do you want to address it how do you want to handle it clemson right now is at a crucial decision point for this community and it's less about you know how do we um keep growth from happening because it is going to happen but how do we look at it with clear eyes and make the right decisions that propel our community forward and we're happy to tell you that there are communities that have made very good decisions at at this critical decision point and there are a number of strategies that you can employ um to accomplish so many of the goals and objectives and things that this community expressed as being important now our advice our clinical experience is such that the best way to approach growth to approach the challenges of your community you'll be relatively more successful when you think about your city as being made of these different systems that are fundamentally here to serve people if you're thinking about your community as the people the workers the citizens and the consumers that compose it as opposed to thinking of your city as a collection of streets and roads it's going to inform a set of strategies that are going to be a lot more successful and i often like to do an exercise with communities where i ask you all if we were here in person we'd ask you where is your economy where's your innovation where's your education your culture what is it that you value the most and none of these things can be tied specifically to a particular area or to a piece of infrastructure or a particular building although they do uh some of these things do occur uh in buildings okay communities are more than that you're more than that clemson it's a collection of people and we've got to make sure that the systems are serving you so i'm going to give you some examples i want to give you an example that first i want to talk about traffic which is a big hot button issue we saw from the surveys this is a big concern the increasing traffic in this community and it's a real concern it's a very real and tangible concern what we want to do is share with you three approaches that other communities have taken that are largely failed strategies communities i want to share with you stories about communities that when they were at that critical decision point when they were confronted with unprecedented growth the way you all are now uh many of them result uh resort to these three strategies or one or a combination of them and unfortunately they're not successful strategies and i want to explain them to you the first one is shut it down let's say this community could um limit growth to just outside of the city just say hey shut it down we don't want any more growth the problem of course are all those other things we talked about the university is going to continue to grow uh the region's going to continue to grow people are going to locate then on the periphery of your community and clemson university isn't going to move your major employers aren't going to move um that just means more and more people are certain they have to drive in by car to get here so this would be the worst strategy possible if traffic's your concern to shut down growth and and cause it to go to the perimeter the periphery of your community and we're already seeing a bit of that pattern this shows commuting patterns for your community very very few people both live and work in clemson most people already live outside of clemson and drive in this is what's contributing to rush hour traffic all right to have relatively more people living and working in the city would make for shorter commutes um and would lessen traffic the second failed strategy is what we call the double down strategy and you don't have to look too far you can go down the road for what we would call the poster child probably the the best national case study for road widening and lane widening projects and why they don't work and i'm talking about atlanta so atlanta has an incredibly successful economy and it's growing rapidly and for the better part of two decades the way they addressed uh traffic was to simply add another lane and add another lane and what that would do is it would alleviate traffic for a little bit it would get it moving for a while but it would create something that we call induced traffic once it got moving again uh development would continue to happen further and further out and it would clog traffic again it would add another lane at some point they reached a limit and it didn't work so cities all over the world uh and not just the united states are looking at that case study and saying this is not a successful approach and that's why it won't be successful to simply widen roads and widen the arterial roads within your community there's a third approach the bypass approach which is to introduce a new route that goes around the city so that through traffic doesn't come through here and there's a logic to this and when we understand that the problem is that estimates of that bypass are around 500 million dollars um the state dot has not said that this is something that they're going to do or prioritize and this is something that's largely out of the control of the city of clemson um but there's another reason that this is not the best approach if we step back and we thought about this critically for a minute what else could you do if there was 500 million dollars to spend what else could you do with that well clemson could build 50 miles of walkable livable transit supporting complete streets so that this community can get around uh by ways other than car um and in fact clemson only has 10 miles of major arterials so you wouldn't even need that much investment to to make this uh a walkable livable environment in all of your corridors but let's think about it further okay thinking about this idea about thinking about investing in people cities being made of people first and not brick and mortar a lot of people expressed a concern about affordable housing well for 500 million dollars you could build 2500 new homes and give them away you could give 10 000 residents roughly the number of permanent non-student residents in this community a 50 000 check you can give 500 small businesses a million dollars in seed money and that was another thing the survey said people want more and varied small businesses you could fund a quality transit system for 50 years buy a thousand city buses heck you could buy helicopters and and and and and help people commute that way um now the reality is there is no pot of gold there is no 500 million dollars and even if there was there would be better ways to invest in your city uh if you all truly want to become an inclusive resilient community with a higher quality place we are here to tell you there are definitely better ways to invest in your community and so that's the question what does clemson want its legacy to be do you want to follow the same standard approaches which have been shown to fail and for which there are better ways to allocate resources this is your decision point now let's take another example student housing and density another hot button issue and a real issue a real challenge for this community and for other communities with flagship universities especially small towns student housing especially upscale student housing off campus has happened at an unprecedented rate that has provided challenges for virtually every community where it's occurred and we talked in one of our educational videos about how that shapes land economics that student housing upscale student housing is such that a real estate developer can offer uh three million dollars per acre for a piece of land and prior to that nobody could offer more than five hundred thousand uh in your major commercial areas so they're able to buy up uh the choices pieces of real estate and um what one of the recommendations uh we're making is to find opportunities to develop that uh that development product so that that alleviates development pressure in other parts of your corridor where um where things like workforce housing can only economically viably occur at lower land prices another way to look at this think of it this way this is one of the best ways i can explain this have you ever been to an aquarium and wondered how do they keep the sharks from eating all the other fish in the tank um you talk to operators of aquariums and they tell you that's the number one question that they get and there's a variety of strategies that they employ you know they get the right mix of fish they can train the sharks to some degree but the number one strategy is to make sure that they're well fed to understand exactly how much food and energy that shark needs to consume each day and make sure they're well fed and that's why they don't consume the rest of the fish we could think of we could think of market analysis and student housing in the same way if we uh understand how much demand there is for upscale student housing and provide it somewhere then that's going to mean that the rest of the land isn't going to get gobbled up by student housing and we can start to plan for other types of uses whether that's workforce housing affordable housing uh commercial uh space for small businesses that's the simplest way we can we can explain it and this would start to open up other areas and so that we could plan for other uses that you all have told us are important to you so a question that we've gotten in this plan several times is you know what are you going to do about traffic what are you going to do and why the focus on student housing well it's not on student housing for student housing's sake the reality is placing high-end units in one place will keep rents down in others student units in one place will reduce land speculation in others giving those those opportunities for workforce development opportunities also you can take lucrative development and harness the revenue that that creates and divert some of it into funds that help you achieve other things other community goals an affordable housing fund for example or a land trust that ensures that vulnerable populations don't get displaced and by the way foot traffic and density for non-students could actually support more and diverse businesses in your community so as you'll see one of the one of the strategies is to find areas for growth in the city ideally that are close to employment close to the university and to link them with great multimodal infrastructure bike and pedestrian facilities walkable sidewalks uh transits and some of this you can see from the downtown corridor study is already included in a plan that was recently completed in that key stretch and we're talking about sites close to the university one of the few options available because so much of the community's developed with neighborhoods that need to be protected are some of your commercial areas areas with uh either vacant buildings or under utilized buildings low rent buildings or deteriorated ones areas with excessive amounts of surface parking these are going to be your best uh opportunities to uh allow for uh development that's transit supporting and our study shows that as many as 500 housing units could be supported on just eight acres um or as many as 20 acres depending on that density and there are there is a lot of land in your corridors if we look at these denser housing formats so what these strategies can do if we alleviate if we find places for student housing if we find places for workforce housing is it can alleviate some of the escalating housing costs we can't depress them we can't uh have them not go up at all but we can we can bend the affordability curve so if we think about this line here as being the income of of a nurse of a school teacher of an assistant professor we can make it so that rents escalate on a more sustainable path and the same is true for traffic we can't sit here and promise you that there's any any one strategy that's going to make traffic go down what we can tell you is a host of strategies when done in unison can ensure a slower trajectory and a more manageable trajectory of traffic growth while you build other infrastructure elements that provide better and more varied options to get around in this community and the reason for that is that multi-family housing requires fewer trips per day people that live in multi-family housing travel less and especially if you can link it to transit which does require a certain density in order to work do you remember uh the slide that we showed a few minutes ago sorry i'm having a little bit of a slide lag here it's like we showed a few minutes ago showing that projected scenario with all of this development there is another way if clemson greenville spartanburg they got together took this corridor-based approach uh according to that uh study uh for upstate um just 10 percent of the land would be consumed that otherwise will be consumed under the current trends and so that's a lot less land and a lot less traffic that would be clogging these arteries and so here's that other projected scenario you might recall that other one uh all this land was built out this is another approach that would uh preserve a lot of uh undeveloped land and reduce traffic and by the way it's a lot cheaper to extend utilities and roads to uh smaller areas for development it's much more expensive to spend it on sprawling areas with uh you know two and three and four units per acre so that can free up a lot of money to spend on other things that this community has expressed that it wants now development shouldn't occur in this community for development's sake it needs to be paired with a community contract that density has to come with other benefits for this community which means preserving and protecting key neighborhoods as well as historic areas in downtown and the in the lake front it also means making sure that money is going into funds for affordable housing for workforce housing and that policies ensure that housing developed for that middle market is delivered to that middle market not just students and as we said there is no pot of gold there is greater revenue that the city can derive from development this is also going to take university partnerships the university is going to have to play a key role in student housing development it's going to have to play a key role in transits and entrepreneurship so this is where we are you know imagine coming into a um a doctor's appointment and you have some kind of ailment and the best answer you could possibly get is there's some kind of pill you can take that won't require any effort it's low cost it won't cause you require you to change your lifestyle in any way shape or form and we're not telling you that as it pertains to this there is no silver bullet fixed there is no pill um but you can put these strategies in place that can mitigate the costs of growth and change of traffic and the cost of housing and in doing so uh you can become a more inclusive resilient community uh with a higher quality of life so we're here again to tell you clemson you're more than your traffic networks uh okay there are so many uh elements of your community that can get richer and more vibrant and better and more diverse um and we can mitigate the worst impacts uh along the way as well and so the strategies we're going to put forth are really aimed at that it's looking at this growth realistically uh thinking about new land use patterns not applying the old fixes that have been tried in the past that have been proven to fail and to try to harness that development in ways that make you more inclusive resilience create a higher quality of life these images that you see here are from other college towns uh walkable mixed use vibrance transit supporting likable these things are within your grasp as a city these strategies that you're going to see are aimed at creating a better more inclusive community and this is within your grasp um we're going to share with you the six strategies we're going to share with you the what we shared with you the why we're going to share with you the what and key takeaway is that there's a lot of things under these six strategies for your city staff to do there's a lot of things for council to do there's also roles for each and every citizen there's roles for the university roles for uh entrepreneurs and businesses it's going to take the whole community it's not the easy answer it's not the it's not the pill approach but it's an honest approach and it's the one that will give you a better more sustainable more resilient community moving forward next i'm gonna turn it uh miriam and i are gonna run through the six strategies with you all and each of those strategies uh is really aimed at addressing these four goals of encouraging appropriate housing that is affordable to a wide spectrum of the clemson community that honors clemson's cultural historic and natural assets and resources that positions clemson to welcome and adapt to economic change and opportunities and creates livable places and a high quality of life over to you miriam great so with that um like matt said kind of like he just presented provide sort of the the why for uh the the six strategies and their kind of components that we're about to share with you that i hope start to address some of the more specific comments uh appearing in the chat so you can see you know there are six uh the first to address housing affordability and there are a few pieces to this um the first to allow for a broader mix of housing types the second to prevent encroachment of student housing into historic neighborhoods and traditional neighborhoods the third to uh in a real focused way create and preserve affordable housing options and then the force to target some portion of new housing options to non-students and i'll walk through each of these still at a fairly high level our next step as matt said is to really get into the details of all of this and identify specific implementation steps so for those of you who've been able to watch the videos we we talked about this really um you know a powerful role that density plays in affordability where on high value lands very low density housing it's just not going to be attainable to most people who live and work in clemson today and i know that this is a challenge a lot of people are very well aware of and so you know thinking about new ways of using not just undeveloped and underutilized land but um you know land in and at the edges of neighborhoods to encourage small lot single-family housing development and we know there's been a lot of conversation underway around an r6 zoning designation and also allow for missing middle housing types in more areas than they're allowed today so the duplexes townhomes um small scale condos and four unit walk-ups that can bring things a little bit better into um more of a workforce affordable range the second strategy it's really about you know none of these silver bullets right but kind of the things that need to be thought about to prevent the encroachment of student housing into uh traditional single-family neighborhoods a big part of that this kind of gets to matt's shark analogy right is to identify the specific areas and provide um a zoning framework for uh student housing along commercial corridors and in a way that really starts to satisfy demand in the context of other development happening in in the region uh the second is to think about on-campus housing opportunities and some universities have uh put policies in place for example to require freshmen and sophomores to live on campus and provide the housing needed to do that and then there are tools through zoning as well to set strong expectations that you know there will not be uh rezonings for commercial large multi-family uses in single-family neighborhoods even if land is required to do that um and you continue to enforce some of the policies already in place around occupancy maximums and to continue the rental housing program that kind of monitor the the quality and location of student housing in the community so the third piece is to really take a with a strong intention a look at affordability in the community and we know that a community housing foundation is getting just off the ground to do some of this work and um you know part of that's legacy and air education so people's property rights are protected especially in historically african american neighborhoods um and ultimately to acquire um and support the development of affordable housing and so you know this is a really important uh but we thank entity to be creating and um creating a dedicated local funding source for that work is really a key piece of this puzzle a lot of communities will have these organizations in place but without sufficient funding to support that work in the way that matches the ambitions of the community so that it won't be as effective and to us we begin to think about catalyst areas which we'll present in the sixth strategy to think about the role of workforce and affordable housing and those two the last piece here is target new housing options to non-students and this is where we see in other communities a planned development process being used to establish guidelines that help to do some of this targeting so requiring developers to require residents to income qualify on their own for example to rent by unit rather than by bedroom the limit unit sizes we put other measures in place that really make it a more suitable product for non-students than for students and then again to continue to enforce those existing policies and third you know the community housing foundation or another community development entity playing an active role in uh developing affordable housing can be a part of this too delivering workforce and affordable housing to the intended market the second strategy is about enhancing the public realm and the pieces of that are about um lake access and we we've heard how important and unique that is in clemson uh improving comfort and character along commercial corridors um both throughout the city but especially as we're trying to create transit and you know walkable new development um and to think about opportunities to incorporate new green space in in and alongside development and downtown we'll walk through each of these briefly too so enhancing late access part of that is improving connections where they just expanded connections and you know in some cases commercial redevelopment may actually create new opportunities to create connections preserve views and you know potentially create more access to the lake as it happens in certain locations you know improving comfort and character along commercial corridors in downtown so if we're trying to support development in a format where uh walking biking and taking transit uh are attractive options to help keep uh students off the road and other people off the road and make you know driving um more uh more of an option from second to other options you need to really think about the the character of the public realm and make sure that it's inviting safe and comfortable on the next slide you know there the city has lots of plans um in place already maybe there's a yeah a little bit of a lag here i'm seeing but um you know the downtown corridor um master plan uh lays out a vision for you know exactly what this could be uh in clemson's downtown the green crescent trail of course would be a really critical piece of this as well and then finally incorporating quality public space into new development so in areas where there's an opportunity for acquisition and assembly of parcels into a larger area where there's a unified development vision you know that type of thinking and that type of process creates the opportunity to integrate more amenities like green space public space and even some programs open space that could serve not just residents of the new development but the entire community okay so let's talk about strategy three which is cultivate entrepreneurship and innovation this was something that came up a lot in our conversations in particular that people would like to see more and varied uh storefront options restaurants dining and so on innovation is also an important part of this as part of a university town uh there's uh opportunities to uh you know we're advising uh exploring more opportunities for co-working uh and other types of spaces that provide uh opportunities for startup businesses uh there is a university supported incubator they have expressed some interest in having a storefront presence uh in the community and this would be great at for diversifying your economy uh we'll also put forth strategies to create more of an ecosystem that gets at creating more small and local businesses and that's really what it takes it takes an ecosystem uh like so many other things that there isn't a silver bullet solution but there's certainly paths forward to have more of that active vibrant college town kind of environment with the diversity of businesses that i think people are craving and creating a business improvement district is one of the most logical things uh this is really something that can be led by your business uh community but supported by the city and supported by the university and um there's a variety of different models i looked at several in different university communities different college towns that involve really businesses getting together marketing together doing things like downtown maintenance and shared parking and all of these things and in several instances uh the university and city play a supporting role in those moving on to strategy four community history and character there's a number of elements of this include including creating neighborhood plans uh beginning with clemson's historically african-american neighborhoods continuing to evaluate zoning and designing design guidelines for clemson's core and leveraging development to support the creation of public amenities so this involves facilitating community-driven planning processes to establish neighborhood investment priorities such as cultural and historical expression and and preservation priorities this is about working uh with some neighborhoods that um in many cases are historically black or african-american that are going to require some some attention and some investments and um it also involves continuing to evaluate zoning and design guidelines for the core of downtown um the city has been refining those guidelines uh taking reducing height limits so buildings can't be as tall uh they're changing uh facade requirements to require more bricks so that buildings uh complement uh kind of that downtown historic downtown college town feel that people have expressed so supporting more of that and looking for opportunities to support the arts um which we see in so many vibrant uh university communities um and you know whether that's in the downtown whether it's along the green crescent trail is going to be contributive to uh history and character um strategy five moving people not cars so this really gets at transportation and we're not talking about taking you know eliminating cars but we are talking about thinking about how we move people around first uh first and foremost and so that involves improving bike and pedestrian infrastructure it involves enhancing transit options and addressing parking in some places uh when we're thinking about bike and pedestrian infrastructure this is a really important concept to understand historically cities when you see those bike lanes that are three feet wide on the side of a busy arterial that's really designed as that's that's recreation infrastructure that's really designed to a very small swath of our population and i kind of think of them as this kind of the spandex folks that are kind of your hardcore bikers if we really want uh people moving around by bike as a real part of the community's infrastructure to take cars off the road it needs to be protected bike facilities that's how you get a much larger share of people biking and off the roads and when we look at the system uh right now of bike facilities really only this green part here really meets that quite uh that criterion today um but there are plans to invest in some key areas including college avenue so uh when those get funded that's going to make for some significant improvements uh to your transportation network your non-auto transportation network and here's kind of you know what some of those things can look like this is what we mean when we say protected bike lines these are environments that a lot more people feel safe on um these uh types of approaches are fine on less busy roads uh you're going to need more of this in your community and we also looked at some other university communities that uh scored much higher in terms of transit performance we looked at charlottesville we looked at blacksburg we looked at morgantown we've done some case studies in all of these instances there's a greater budget for transit and uh the university is a strong participant in that uh up to 50 percent of that uh from virginia tech in blacksburg so this is one of those cases where a university partnership really is important you're going to need a really effective transit system and um you know there isn't a gentle way of saying this clemson system needs it needs to be better in order to take cars off the road and lastly uh thinking especially in an area like downtown maybe for a parking garage in the future that um enables people yes people might be driving to downtown but if we can get them to park once and then walk around downtown that's going to alleviate some traffic so looking for those opportunities looking for parking opportunities where they exist is going to be really important and then lastly we've got about 12 minutes here and we want to share this with you this is about establishing development opportunities and you're going to see a survey is going to go out we really need your input on this these are the strategies that we're putting forth now these will require exercising greater regulatory control for the type and character and location of density it's not everywhere it's going to be in key places reviewing and refining guidelines for building design and development exploring public private partnerships and identifying those appropriate redevelopment sites in areas that mitigate traffic impacts okay so we've we've identified nine potential areas uh for uh development and growth over the next 10 years and these uh will have a different uh emphasis uh in our strategies um depending on whether they're on campus or campus adjacent those are going to you know definitely have a student focus uh there's other areas kind of in between that um could have more of a mix of student and non-student housing as well as other uses and then there's some development areas that are a little little more remote but could be better linked with transits where the emphasis can be on you know non-students can be on market rate housing but also that missing metal workforce housing as well as affordable housing and these are those areas and again um there's going to be a recording of this so you can go back and and look at each of these areas we want to walk you through uh each of the nine with our remaining time uh and give you the highlights so that you can come back and look at these concepts and tell us what you think in the survey um number one miriam oh you're on mute miriam thank you looks like i need to double click to on these um now so this area is um you know the far north of the city parts of it outside of the city that would require annexation um some of it environmentally sensitive and all north of um you know the major traffic bottleneck at the intersection of tiger and college and what we see could happen here is um housing primarily oriented to non-students but a mix of market rate housing alongside workforce and affordable housing in kind of a new urbanist format and all this kind of mixed with neighborhood serving commercial and retail uses in a waffle format so people um you know living there could uh have most trips within within this kind of new growing part of the community and the potential to integrate office too you're part of that broader effort to diversify the community's economy and you know to make this work you would really this would need to happen alongside significant investments in transit um and you know also to think about how to design you know with nature and mitigate the environmental impacts there in a way that also creates potentially water and access to access to water catalyst area 2 near north so this is an area that today uh it's kind of a mix of older student housing it has some undeveloped areas there is some acquisition and assembly already underway and so i think the efforts here would be more about um um bolstering that with transits and bike and pedestrian facilities to minimize the amount of addition traffic that uh student largely student housing would contribute uh particularly down college uh uh down college uh to get to the university so there there's there's kind of that bottleneck of traffic at uh tiger in college so that would need to get uh addressed with some some more detailed strategies that we'd focus on in the next phase um catalyst area three establish uptown so um i want to draw a distinction between uptown and downtown downtown we all know what that area is and effort there is largely going to be about uh complementing what's there as i said there's design standards in place some of this some of the ground has been down zoned this is uptown this is the area closer to tiger uh boulevard and this is really about rethinking this area with a mix of student housing some of which is already planned and under underway uh with non-student housing and with a mix of uh of businesses um and key uses like a food hall and ground floor retail and this is where a business incubator could go and so the effort here uh is is about providing a diversity of experiences and uh making sure that areas uh adjacent to the lake are protected and perhaps enhanced there's redevelopment that could occur along tiger where you've got some commercial sites backing up to the lake uh perhaps those could be developed in the future so that uh public you know public amenity is part of the system uh and and and views of the water uh are part of the system and linking all that with great bike and pedestrian infrastructure uh as a gateway into the downtown uh possibly other civic uses could include an expanded art center at some point in the future uh miriam yeah so catalyst areas four and five you can see them on the little key map are um you know within the city of clemson but right at the edge of clemson university where today there's a mix of older student housings and institutional uses and a couple of surface parking lots and in both of these cases kind of some dynamic topography that creates some challenges but also present some opportunities what we envision here would be that you know these would be really very appropriate places for high density student housing bringing as many students as pos possible as close to campus as possible really limiting the number of cars and the amount of driving students would need to do significant density would be required in this in these places to support the acquisition costs you know potentially integrating some limited student serving retail but not not a major new mixed-use focus and especially at the edges incorporating um green space and thinking about height transitions to to limit the impact on surrounding neighborhoods and then when we think about catalyst area 6 this is growing on campus so this is this is where the university can play a significant role moving forward this is about student housing on campus um there has been some uh you know university development over over 2000 beds in fact and so this is about continuing that um looking at examples of other university communities that have explored even public private partnerships to build a significant amount of student housing on campus it's not going to be a panacea we know that juniors and seniors generally are not going to live on campus but if the university could take on more of a share of student housing again that's going to greatly improve traffic it's going to free up uh land for development for other uses for this community and so this is a role that the university can play a significant role this along with transit along with helping with entrepreneurship um to really help clemson uh the city uh as as a whole community become everything that it can be miriam yeah so you know this area um just uh a bit north and east of clemson university along old greenville highway where there's some older student housing today um you know we see potential to redevelop this to provide housing a mix to um for students and to non-students and in a way that would incorporate some missing middle and workforce housing options um you know especially in the the northern part of this area closer to the clemson's african-american museum this is an area that's actually large enough to provide some internal green space and do that in a way that would enhance the connections to and visibility of and access to the clemson african-american museum and think about this development in a way that contributes to this part of the clemson community while also providing new housing options for students and non-students together looking at catalyst area a which we're tentatively calling clemson crossing and this is just a little bit further out uh it's in that area um where the old uh bilo uh grocery store is and this is an area where you know there's some vacant and underutilized commercial uses preponderance of surface parking lots we think this is a great opportunity for a mixed use transit supported community village walkable that consists of a mix of largely workforce and affordable and market rate housing so this is an area that's uh not about students uh and and this is about targeting uh you know a mix of multi-family typologies to really target that missing middle of housing types uh there could be some ground floor retail possibly a junior anchor maybe some inclusion of office space i mean there's a fair amount of land available for development and if that's linked uh a great transit system with good bike and pedestrian infrastructure as well as solutions like a park and ride this could be a really great place that can address some of these some of these issues of a lack of affordability for this this group that's been uh underserved uh in terms of uh housing and the final area we want to mention is the paclid milliken site you know where of course planning is already underway in this large undeveloped area oriented mostly to non-students and you know like in other places where we're talking about housing oriented to non-students that would necessarily need to be accompanied by policies to ensure that that's delivered to the non-student housing market um this will be a mix of upscale uh housing workforce housing market rate housing with some neighbor survey neighborhood serving um retail within it as well and you know like in other places the transit and multimodal connections will be a key part of making the successful um reducing and well mitigating the traffic impacts on the broader community so here's a grid that really sums up the approach here nine different sites uh and remember this is one of six strategies right but when we're thinking about development sites we've identified these nine sites that um you can see here uh a host of you know the overall goals to be achieved and a host of objectives uh adjacent to those and no one site can address all of these objectives um there's different um different transportation opportunities and challenges different market opportunities and challenges economic considerations all of these things come into play in what's possible but what we can do is over these nine sites uh check the box if you will address all these issues some areas with more emphasis on uh student housing some with more emphasis on workforce housing others on market rate housing some with a business and entrepreneurial focus as well others that uh contribute revenue that can be leveraged for things like an affordable housing fund that might be able to be utilized city-wide so you know this is the crux of the strategy one of the mistakes communities often make is trying to pack every aspiration into a single site it's often not possible for a variety of reasons but when we look at the totality of sites that are have the potential for development or redevelopment in this community if it's gone about in an intentional way uh these uh goals and objectives can be addressed in a holistic way for this community and really help it make strides toward being more inclusive more resilient and mitigating some of the worst impacts of growth so that's our presentation i think we landed right at five o'clock here want to share with you all really quick next steps uh there's going to be a survey that we need you all to take this is going to be recorded this is going to be up for a couple of weeks and please share it with your friends share the video um let people know that they can watch the video take the surveys we need to hear from you all uh on these strategies uh that we've put forth and then we're gonna take that and refine that and do some revised scenarios to make that ultimate white paper uh recommendation so please give us your input the website again is clemsonnext.com we need to hear from you and i really appreciate you all taking the time to uh join us uh today uh bob do you have any uh any closing remarks yeah uh miriam when will the and you're on mute now uh when will the survey uh be up in the recording i know the recording will take a little bit to uh process and get that on but when will the survey be available that will be up uh tonight so if you check tomorrow morning um it'll certainly be there um yeah it may take a minute to process the recording but within the hour i think you can expect to find it on the website all right well thank you for being here um again uh you know tonight what you saw was kind of a high level overview of what these strategies are there are more details to come um we probably to get go through where we are now would probably take close to three or four hours of a presentation i don't think that we would keep you here that long but in the uh final plan the recommendations uh will include a ton more detail thanks for your comments uh in the chat there i i was following along with that and i can promise you that almost everything we saw in the chat has been taken into consideration and uh isn't included uh will be included in the uh final details of the uh of the plan um again please um over the next uh we're going to leave the survey open for about the next 10 days and that's where we want you to go back through look at the slides again you know the recording you can fast forward on the recording to different areas to digest that information uh more and provide there'll be some some quantitative data about how supportive you are of strategies but there's also uh ample opportunity uh to provide open-ended comments so again thank you for being here thank you for your continued participation and uh we really need your input at this level as the strategies are refined over the next month as we get to the final product um so uh we will be in touch and uh keep looking at the website social media and uh be on the lookout for other uh communications from the city and from the committee about the plan thank you all very much and have a good rest of your evening thanks everyone thank you okay