TRANSCRIPT: 2012 Clayton State of the City Speech

Mayor Linda Goldstein delivered her 2012 State of the City speech on Wednesday night at in downtown. She shared the following copy of her remarks. Minor edits have been made for style purposes.

THIS I BELIEVE… 
(State of the City, January 2012)

Welcome! So glad you’re here! Once again this year we’re delighted to be able to have this event in Clayton’s newest commercial building and in the beautiful offices of Armstrong Teasdale. We appreciate your being here with us today, and we want to especially thank Armstrong Teasdale, , and the for their hospitality. A special thanks to our host , managing partner of Armstrong Teasdale, and also a congratulations to him as well on being selected as a “2012 Law Firm Leader” by Missouri Lawyers Weekly.

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Today…

• I’m going to make a few introductions
• I’ll give you a brief update of “the state of Clayton”
• We’ll take some questions
• We want to hear from you so we encourage you to seek us out after the presentation.

You may have noticed the slideshow during the reception.  This past fall our Board had a retreat and one of the exercises we did was based on the NPR program, “This I Believe”.  We’ve paired pictures of the aldermen with their comments so you’ll be able to recognize them when you see them.  With us this evening is:

Ward 1: Judy Goodman and Andrea Maddox-Dallas

Ward 2: Michelle Harris and Cynthia Garnholz

Ward 3: Steve Lichtenfeld and Mark Winings

Many of our talented professional staff members are here as well including City Manager Craig Owens and Gary Carter our economic development expert.  Again, we encourage you to come up to us after the presentation to talk about anything else that’s on your mind that wasn’t addressed.

Last year we completed our Downtown Master Plan and Retail Strategy and I thought I would use the Action Plan that resulted from that study as a framework to fill you in on some of the exciting things that have been happening here in our city.  There are a number of different categories in the Action Plan and I can’t get to them all today, but I’m going to start with talking about:

• Retail:
  • Latest exciting news: Niche & Pastaria!
  • New retail in the last year:
    • (Great write up: Washington Post w/ Niche)
    • Kabbalah Bookstore (Grand opening yesterday)

• Using Consumer Spending Patterns and Retail Vacancy as a guide, Gary Carter has been targeting specific types of retail for our community, so … stay tuned!

• A number of new offices opened last year, among them…
  • Digital Intelligence Systems Corp

…bringing more than 200 jobs to our community.

• Another area of emphasis is housing: Increase number of downtown residents
  • • Rezoned last evening
    • Rental Residential 206 Units

• Retention of government uses & consolidation of facilities for higher density is another action point:
  • Last night the Board approved a resolution in favor of the County’s bond issue to relocate from Brentwood and to improve and update the current .

• Last night was a really busy night! We also moved forward with our mobility initiative which encourages alternate modes of transportation by:
  • Adopting a Complete Streets Policy which formalizes many procedures already in place such as
    • Crosswalks constructed and timed with elderly and disabled in mind
    • Share the road policy on Forsyth, Meramec, & Carondelet

• To further promote walkability and enhance the pedestrian experience we’ll be doing streetscape improvements on Bonhomme & Carondelet this year…and we’re also encouraging owners who may have or to have decorative scenes on their display windows instead of just plain paper.
• By the way, we’re all disappointed when we see an empty storefront, but I thought you would be interested to know that our retail vacancy rate in the downtown area is 12.78%...which means that close to 90% are occupied!  Not bad!

Well, there’s a lot more to say, but I want to leave some time for questions, so in closing I’d like to thank you for doing your part to make 2011 a good year in our community.  We’re glad you’re here and…

THIS I BELIEVE…

2012 will be another great year!

Thank you!