what do you think of the settlement is i guess it's a step but forward it's disappointing in some way and helpful in others the big disappointment in  i think for me personally and for many members of the c l c is that the overblown fourteen story mall will still be an overblown fourteen story but there are positive elements that have come out of the settlement as well one of them is that two hundred parking spaces will be underground which is where we believe all of them should have been to begin with but the developer insisted that that was unfeasible so there will be underground spaces a portion of the overlay district in which fourteen storey buildings additional fourteen storey buildings might have been built it's been agreed that no buildings  for community based downtown initiatives instead of investor based downtown initiatives such as the mall redevelopment as originally proposed and there are clear i'm speaking as an individual logan very active in the seals but what they've done is provide the with the important and missing critical voice on development on time so for example the original proposal was look totally demolish the church street parking garage and not to provide any additional parking for people coming into the small businesses to the restaurants on church street and they would have suffered enormously had the original sin x proposal gone through because all of the parking that he would build would be earmarked for the tenants the commercial and the retail tenants in his buildings so this would downtown extension of the campus housing course for the champlain college and this would not have helped him to ramp up on a commercial basis the rest of his units to be living next to a dormitory would have been i think a disaster and he did not understand and see all see made it clear no nor in fact does that to the city council or the mayor understand the drawbacks in this system do i would like just just say very quickly is that the the marketplace district in the marketplace commission under the leadership of ron redmond really only c l c an enormous quota fanks they haven't overlay district that they develop and another buyer to that property will likely demolish it and put in fourteen stories so we're beginning this process of incremental expansion of the downtown which is going to two million dollars was approved by the by the taxpayers to be borrowed by the public to support this development and much of that was to well part of it was to really the stiff money was going to be used in part to pay the developer her for the real estate that would make up those those new portions of those kinds of streets and the additional millions would be to actually build the streets paved then the engineer then put in the sidewalks and the other amenities that are part of the pleasant pleasant down town street so the c l c and and other people oppose that concept of public money subsidizing private development and brought a suit against that part of the settlement agreement that was reached  the developer has agreed to give back that real estate to the community so the community will have to pay for it but if money will still be expended to develop the streets when we feel that that is really the and my point was that these street pads were originally given to the developers of the mall apparently at no cost the city has apparently not been interested in doing the research to find out if any money was paid but it would appear from the settlement that johnson ex has accepted the fact that the project which he purchased pretty inexpensively in fact was a beneficiary of this very public land and now he's returned to the city which is i think a good thing although we will be paying quite a bit of money for the development of the streets on the street frontage which is benefiting his project specifically so i don't think that the process is a self beyond criticism  we go here we get what i think i think it's charles suggested be that the goal is to have development proceed responsibly and with the public interest in mind rather than primarily focusing on the interests of developers and investors and that's the real objection here to go back to the very beginning to deal breaker as far as i'm concerned was when the city and the city council agreed to change the zoning law at the behest of the developer the whole purpose of joining was to protect the public interest and have the city develop in a way that the the jones they don't work for me i need some different zoning laws and if then the city jumps and it and then goes out of their way to  our downtown is going to be this high or our neighborhoods are going to be this dentist and you can kind of count on that not that it's never going to ever change but there are certain things are pretty solid and you can expect them to remain that way that's not the case anymore because this developer because i think the the number of dollars that he promised to invest in in the community that kind of dazzled many many people and made them perhaps he less clearly than they might have otherwise and they were then willing to just change the laws to suit the developer instead of requiring the developer to observe and respect the office and those are really laws that grew out of a community and they reflected the vision that the community has for their city i believe that that nation should have then respected by our city certainly the c l c and others who have resisted this development have shown that it might not be altogether easy that you can't just do that without some kind of turmoil or or or or or pushback so i think that's helpful the environment the fact that people are actively engaged in the community is so is is is a no factor now i don't think that was expected in this case but it still is an open question they were able to change the law because they had the support of the mayor and the council and perhaps that could happen again that's the that's the danger that's where the kind of the solid reassurance a good  mediation is if we could agree on something it's probably not going to be something we really wanted or that they really wanted but it's what we could think we could live and that's basically what it came down to but we looked at all the circumstances we looked at what all our options were and one option would have been  continue to fight this as long as it went by what we don't think it's going to go as long as we hope but i think we decided we could get something now that we wouldn't get later and it was probably the best we were going to end up with the system is heavily slap in favor of this development the way the whole thing was set up and the way the courts were ruling there were some rulings in our favor but a lot of them were not and you could see how they were trying to make it more difficult for us to proceed as this thing went along so i think we reached a settlement it's important issues on these guys have probably got through some of that one is at least in the future developments on this side there's a phase two possible there will be fourteen story buildings on that they've also agreed to not sell the land for pine street in st paul two but you're going to return to the city they're not going to sell that they could get that other still want to charge for the improvements to it but at least they're going to give them that they'll be no students no student will be the student the student could rent the unit in this building but none of this where college is going to read a whole floor around one hundred units and without the students not going to become any kind of a downtown student living facility and then fired for getting one item but the thing that i thought was the biggest thing for us because it's the future and i think it's some of the things that probably charles and michael talked about this isn't the end of the struggle it's got built one thank you could be a domino effect to build much more we got them to will be for the purpose of protecting and promoting the character bill and we'll start with some money from the developer i'm hoping we're going to grow it and it's going to be bigger than what he's putting in and that will be what i would call a counterweight to the notion been really under the same understanding we don't have the weapons and they have they've got all the money and all the resources this will be our county to see if we want growth of a certain type of we don't want to see everything just get pushed aside the money just get whatever they want and sort of force the issue i think there's a lot of common ground and good development and we're going to help to be part of that so that's a that's a future that it doesn't and that is a lot of future because let me start by saying that as steve says money is a big factor here the way this turn now has a lot to do with who has more money and who has last night it's really not a level playing field for citizens trying to shape their community because as in the struggle we saw that we were outspent six to one when it came to advocating for or against valid id em's that allowed this project to to go forward so the c l see the coalition for lupul city the name really tells a lot it's a coalition it came together as a number of different community organizations that have been advocating for things to specific issues in the areas such as in the in the arts district or city hall central and the concern is to then work together at a group grassroots level kind of real democracy real people not investors and money calling all of the all the shots and make this community livable for the people who live here and the people who visit here and not focus instead on the interests of investors who are looking for returns focus instead on the interests of people who love this community and want to shape it and live in it and enjoy it and not not take that kind of a back seat to moneyed interests well i would just say that i would welcome the market marketplace commission redmon and the city council and certainly the mayor to continue to meet with c l seize on these variety of somewhat contentious development issues because he and we keep trying to keep in mind the greater interests of the residents of growing and we need to have government holds on