Marina Redevelopment Town Hall ARPA Proposal

My fifth formal proposal to the City Council for ARPA spending is to fund a multi-media presentation ‘explainer’ and Town Hall for Marina Redevelopment.

Background

The City recently released it’s 2021 Draft Marina Master Plan, which I’ll refer to here as ‘Marina Redevelopment’. But having now spoken with a lot of residents who are lobbying the Council to spend ARPA money on everything except the Marina, I’ve heard four themes which should not be underestimated in my opinion:

1. Everyone is very interested in the Marina Redevelopment–even if they have no interest in using ARPA money. I have heard over and over that people feel excluded… ie. they don’t bother asking because they feel like “if the City cared, they would have already done outreach.” That had never occurred to me: if you don’t do outreach, far from demanding information, a lot of people simply get the message that you don’t care and check out.

2. Everyone and I do mean everyone is having a great deal of trouble visualising any projected outcomes. I cannot stress that enough. Even the condo owners just can’t ‘see’ what the 223rd stairs, APB (including views from above), hotel, ferry, might look like, let alone any intentions re. parking, movement of boats to/from dry stock, boat launch, rest room. It is all an abstraction. Those Skylab drawings may have performed well as a sales pitch 7-8 years ago, but now they are deeply frustrating. People have actually told me that they feel stupid for not getting it. They don’t mention it because they assume that everyone else gets it or surely someone else would’ve complained.

3. Residents absolutely no idea about the money: what financing looks like. They have no idea what an ²Enterprise Fund is. If it’s more money for the Marina why should I as a resident care? How does the Adaptive Purpose Building (APB) translate into money for dock replacement? Do larger boats mean something for the town beyond moorage fees? Those are not bad questions. I have them myself.

4. When residents first started talking  about a ‘Town Hall’, I thought what they meant was a ‘public gathering’ where the City Council and Administration stood there and took questions and complaints. Actually, that is not what the people I’ve spoken with want at all–at least, not at this point. For everyone I’ve sat down with, ‘Town Hall’ is at least partly code for “I tried reading that Master Plan and I still don’t get it.”  I’m stunned by how many people have taken the time to read the thing only to have even more questions at the end.

Proposal

What I want to propose is that the City immediately hire a for realz media presentation company to create a for realz presentation consisting of:

1. A Virtual Tour. A 3d fly-through animation demonstrating all aspects of the proposal as far as they can be known at any given point. I mean like showing a ferry docking, boats going in and out of dry stack to the launch, a view from the condos looking down on the APB, a view of the APB from the docks, people descending the 223rd stairs, a re-purposed harbormaster building, parking flows. and of course a fly over of the re-configured moorage. Maybe we do a ‘before and after’ fly-over so people can get a sense of just how big a change it is: the new covered moorage look, how guest moorage changes, the fairways, expansion of Ranger, the various environmental concerns that we are addressing–and why permitting is so costly and so fraught. Everything.
   • And every time the plan changes, the virtual presentation gets updated. That way, people can see how each change is affecting them in real time.
   • (BTW: that environmental thing really matters to a small, but vocal number of residents. They really want to have a sense that the rebuild is compatible with their interest in wildlife.)
2. Bulleted One-Pagers. Posters and hand outs, crafted at a sixth grade level explaining the costs, revenue forecasts, permitting challenges, how we intend to finance and also the appropriate uses of ongoing Marina money. That sounds like anyone can do it, but they can’t. You need an outsider–a media pro to make it work.

Then…

Once we have those tools, then we organize in-person Town Hall Meetings, which should be recorded and broadcast as well. I am sure that audience Q&A is something that people who cannot attend will find very useful.

¹I’m over-simplifying here, but an enterprise fund is self-financing business that the City operates. Operations and finances are kept separate from other City funds.