MSU Extension Tourism

Alright folks, well, let's just go ahead and get started. We want to be respectful of everyone's time and as people continue to to join, will let them in, but might as well get going here. So thank you for being here. My name is Will Corona and I am with the MSU Extension tourism team. This is session four of our critical conversations in Michigan tourism sustainability and climate change Webinar Series. Today we're gonna be talking about resources and funding for sustainability and climate resilience. So really an opportunity to look at some of those resources that you use as community or community or organization might, might need to address this issue and where to find some help with that. And I will jump here into the just a quick reminder before we get too far in here that MSU is affirmative action equal opportunity employer and that our programs are open to all. And if you are ever concerned or feel that you are not welcome at an MSU Extension Program, please do let us know and we will take steps to addressed that. Just a quick reminder, our tourism development team. And if any, if you want some more information about us, any of these folks can help you out. We are statewide, but we have folks around the state that do tourism. We do we have folks on campus that do tourism. Michigan art shares a part of the tourism team and we have a lot of different programs. These critical conversations in Michigan tourism webinar series you can find last year's series on diversity, equity and inclusion on, on media space are our private michigan State University YouTube equivalent, final slide decks there as well. But we also do first impressions programs, both in-person and then digitally. We have lots of different programs around understanding tourism in Michigan communities tourism destination, life cycle planning, community branding, agritourism. So reach out to us if you have questions, if you have a need for something, for that sort of thing, we are here to help. One last reminder as well. Our series goal is and has been to give stakeholders, you folks on the call today, an opportunity to learn more about sustainability and climate change in the context of Michigan and Great Lakes tourism. We want to offer a low stress and supportive environment to discuss these issues and to facilitate collaboration. So again, just an opportunity to kinda relaxed and think through some stuff in a way that's directed but not not too intense. Our agenda today, we'll do introductions and I have a quick discussion question. Then we'll go through a presentation kind of resources for sustainability places to start. I also have a demonstration of a couple of really cool online tool kits that you might find a use. My colleague, Eric Walcott, we'll do an overview of resources and the inflation Reduction Act. And then I'm going to turn it, we will turn it over then to Jim Tucker from immediacy and Catherine Clarke from Smith group to talk about some state-level resources that are available to you at the end, then we'll do a recap and an evaluation. So with that said, I've already introduced myself. Would our other speakers care to just introduce yourselves briefly, eric, do you want to go first? Yeah, thanks. Well, I like Wilson. My name is Eric Walcott. I'm a government community vitality Specialist based on campus at MSU, but working statewide with Will and other colleagues on webinar today. And I'm Jen tucker, The Community Development Manager for the Upper Peninsula at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. And I'm Catherine Clarke, planner at Smith's group working with immediacy. So excited to be here today, everybody. Thanks folks. So we've got a good panel. We've got a lot of good information today. I want to start with a question though, because obviously we have folks from all around the state on the call today. We have people representing a lot of different communities or organizations. What I'm curious, what are some resources that your community or your organization most needs to address the issues of sustainability and climate change right now. What are some, what are some of those resources? And it doesn't necessarily have to be money. I mean, we all need money all the time. But what are some of those resources that you feel like you need to make some progress on this issue that maybe you don't have, or if you want to put it in the chat, that's great. If you'd like to unmute your mic and share, that's fine too, but just kinda a discussion question to kick things off. Maybe you feel like sharing. We have in the comment, jack says more and more ecotourism resources sees with the Pine River Association, he's currently focused on fishing kayaks. Okay. Ecotourism? Absolutely. Anyone else care to share? Just some of those resources you might need? Are they, are they people? Are they education? Are they equipment? Particular skill sets that you don't have? Alright, well, I won't belabor this, please be thinking about it. Brad in the chat says I hear communities mentioning the need for additional staff capacity to find funding administered programs and implement. Absolutely. Be thinking about that, be thinking about this as we go through today. This is really intended to be the beginning of a discussion and a way for you to kind of think through some of those issues. So perhaps we can circle back toward the end and see if anybody has had any a-ha moments as we go forward. So at this point, I'll just talk a little bit about some of those resources that are available to you or a place to start as you move forward in thinking about addressing this. So we've talked a little bit about local government and land-use so far in the series, but I wanted to talk briefly about some powers local government might have to combat climate change. And this is obviously very dependent on your community contexts. So it is a situation where you'd want to talk to your staff, talk to your legal counsel on to make sure you do have the power that you're looking at. But in general, there are some things that that you can look at to make some progress on this. And this is from an article by Gillian blanch or to lawyers for good government. The link is right there and this will be available to you on the slide deck that'll be posted with the recording as well. But some, just some ideas here. Obviously, land use planning is one, making sure that as you as you do your your planning processes and your master plan and revise your your zoning ordinance, things like that, that you're incorporating climate climate friendly sustainability friendly practices into those, into those documents and into your processes. Incentives for renewable energy. And there are some things that local governments can do here and there to work on that. So again, this would be an opportunity for you to talk to folks like like Jen and Catherine to get a better idea what you, what your community can actually do to incent renewable energy in your area. Another idea that is, you know, I just saw GM has a Silverado pickup EV coming out here. It's probably going to be extremely expensive. But hey, it's a start moving that municipal fleet to electric vehicles. And there's a link there from the Department of Energy that talks a lot more about some steps you can take as a community to begin to make that change, change over. As those, as those EVs become more available and more a better fit for a community, things like that. And then green upgrades to municipal buildings. And so there's a link there too. This is just an example. There's lots of different ways to do this. But the city of East Lansing has a green building policy, e.g. that has, it's obviously much more than just these two points, but this is just an example of some of those requirements that the city of East Lansing has put in their municipal the municipal building requirements for to make sure that those, any new construction or upgrades, significant upgrades to buildings are climate friendly or sustainability friendly. So this is just a place to start when you're thinking about things like that from a municipal standpoint, there's more to it. But yeah, check out that link to that article. See what see what she has to say. There's more to it than that. But these are, these are kind of for low-hanging fruit pieces for any community to think about. Some other resources that might be available to you for climate resilience as I was putting this together. And yes, that is the same picture as my Zoom background. Is. I want to say that for those of you who might have an intern, say, this is a good project for an intern because I'm going to share with you a couple of a couple of tool kits that are available to you online that have tons of resources, tons of information available. And you're going to have to sift through them a little bit to find what works for you. They're there. They're useful. There's lots of useful information, but you've got to find it. So again, maybe a good project if you have like like I'm sure many of us on the call at some point have been maybe like a master's of public admin student and had that internship, put that person on on this job. It's a good opportunity for them. The US Climate Resilience Toolkit. This is toolkit.climate.gov. So I'm going to pop out of this screen share into a different screen share because I wanted to show it. It's much easier for me to just kind of click around and show you some of what is available to you on this toolkit. Rather than, rather than just more screenshots on PowerPoint. So let me do that. So we should be seeing it now. This is the Climate Resilience Toolkit. As you can see. There's a practitioner's guide for implementing resilience. Gis, but ready to fund Resilience Toolkit. You click over here. This is a very useful, this is from the American Society of adaptation professionals. Some great information available to you here about funding and financing solutions. Ten characteristics of ready to fund projects, incentives, risk management, things like that, check that out. They have an extensive array of case studies available to you that you can filter by e.g. region. So we can look at Great Lakes case studies, which it didn't take, but there it goes. You can also filter by topic. So tribal nations and the Great Lakes, we've got three case studies here of climate resilience projects that have been undertaken. None in Michigan, unfortunately at this point, but we've got to in Wisconsin and one in Minnesota. You can filter by climate threat stressor, things like that. So this is just something that is a very, there's a lot here. You can browse tools. So you have climate maps, a real capacity map. This is a particularly interesting one where you can evaluate your area. Specifically. They've got kind of a, um, let's see, where's that map out? There it is. They've got the entire country broken out by municipality, by area. And so like you can look at capacity level for dealing with climate change. This is obviously not perfect like so many of these metrics. It's sort of checking boxes and if you fit your, you don't. Maybe that's correct, but it's a good place to start when you begin to think about maybe what is my area? Where, where are we stronger? Where it might be a little weaker, Where could we fill in some gaps? So things like that, lots of, lots of possible stuff to look at on on this Climate Resilience Toolkit. Now the other one I wanted to share with you as well is here. This is the EPA green infrastructure wizard. And it's very, very cool. If you click Explore. This is, there's a link to this in the presentation as well. You can tell it who you are. So if you are a regulatory official, what would you like to do? Compliance, keyword searches, what resources are you looking at? Mapping tools are funding, things like that, outreach, media and how tool, how twos. You can kinda click all the boxes and then it'll give you some results. Oh, no matching data found that see, that's what I get for not clicking the right boxes. But anyway, this is just something I would encourage you to check out as well because it's a, it's a very, very deep, deep, deep resource there with connections to a lot of federal programs and resources that are available to you. Pardon me? So let me go ahead and finish up here. I can figure out how to share screen again. What's wrong with me? There it is. Okay. So just a reminder as well that so there's the, there's the link to the green infrastructure wizard reminder as well that planning APA Michigan chapter has a planning tourism planning focus page that also will have some resources for you as well. So check that out. And then there's also in the PowerPoint deck here, a list of helpful links that would be a good place for you to start as well with that, in turn, give them a chance to dig through that. We've got resources for sustainable communities from the EPA. Purdue University Global has a really nice list of 45 sustainability resources. The ICLEI has local governments and sustainability publications, lots of stuff there, Center for Responsible travel and inside philanthropy grants for climate change. That site is paywalls. But it might be worthwhile if you're really looking for funding to invest the, I think it's 20 bucks a month or something like that for a couple of months to look at. Look at the resources that inside philanthropy offers. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Eric, who is going to talk about the inflation Reduction Act, among other things. Thank you. Alright, Thanks. Well, hopefully you all are seeing my PowerPoint screen now. Yeah. So I already introduced myself. So kinda skip over that, but yeah, I'm just gonna do a quick, kind of brief overview of the inflation Reduction Act and funding for climate James, that was included in that legislation. So as a quick reminder, the inflation Reduction Act, thousand 22 was signed into law by President Biden in August. And it's a wide ranging piece of legislation, headline by investments to lower prescription drug costs, health care costs, and energy costs. Great opportunities for small businesses and innovative startups reduce the federal deficit to address inflation and address the climate crisis. It's obviously today we're going to focus on one piece of that. That's how funding for climate change adaptation in addressing climate related issues. So in total, the Act includes $385 billion in new energy and climate related programs representing the single largest investment in climate impacts that we've seen. Analysis of the act estimates it has the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by 40%, by 20, by 2030, compared to 1,005 baseline, which is a significant step towards the current administration's target of Titan emissions by 50% by 2030. A significant chunk of the funding is through competitive grants. And I'll go over some of what the specific targets for those are. The next few slides. Some of these are grants directly to local units. Some will pass through state agencies, others are directly to non-governmental sectors. I should note that obviously won't be covering every funding program related to climate in the act. So I will share some great resources to end that include more information on as well. One of them is where this graphic here you'll see that it's kind of a breakdown of different areas related to climate or the amount of funding that shows up for those areas. So it kinda key funding categories that I'm going to focus on. These are the broad categories in the act. Our energy use in production, environment, environmental justice and climate, local infrastructure, and then Climate Ready agriculture, forest conservation and resilient. So on. Energy use in production. Well, $8.6 billion is going to go to states to carry out to rebate programs. The homeowner, homeowner managing energy savings, tax rebate program and high-efficiency electric home rebate program. About $200 million designated for states to develop training for contractors. This really should be a benefit to local communities as it increases local capacity for climate adaptation. By preparing more contractors to do the work that your communities may want to invest in AI related to climate action. And then about $760 million for grants to state, local and tribal governments related to interstate electricity transmission. On environment, environmental justice and climate. $27 billion targeting greenhouse gas emissions with a specific focus on environmental justice by targeting disadvantaged. This blending is only through September of 2024, so a shorter timelines and then some of the other funds, flat 7 billion of that, will go to governments to deploy zero emissions technologies. Other greenhouse gas emissions reductions in 20 billion will be in competitive grants to non-profits. Of that 20 billion, 12 billion will be competitive grants for rapid deployment of low and zero emissions products, technologies and services. And then 8 billion to enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy or benefit from zero emissions technology or other greenhouse gases, gas emissions. And that's through a mixture of grants, loans, and other financial assistance. Local infrastructure. To support local infrastructure. That act includes $3 billion for neighborhood access and equity grants. These are grants to reconnect communities divided by infrastructure barriers to mitigate negative impacts of transportation facilities or construction projects, and to support equitable transportation planning. There's also $1 billion for improving energy efficiency, water efficiency or climate resilience. Affordable housing, $1 billion for zero emission, school buses, garbage trucks, math, mass transit buses. So well mentioned earlier the idea of trying to trans, trans transition some of that municipal fleet to electric vehicles. So there's there's some funding for pieces of that in this, then $1 billion to state and local governments to adapt, to adopt improved building codes, including adoption of zero energy codes are others that meet or exceed those standards. An example related to that with the East Lansing policy that will shared minutes ago. The Act also includes $20 billion for resilience and conservation. Programs, including programs that seek to reduce emissions from livestock, agriculture, all soil and rice production includes grants to support forest conservation, fire resilient forest, increasing urban tree planting and restoration of coastal habitats. A few other highlights in that area include 2.6 billion to invest in coastal communities and climate resilience in states that border oceans, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Michigan being a state, obviously received some of that funding. $220 million for Tribal Climate Resilience funding for drives and tribal organizations. Then $8 billion in additional funding for voluntary conservation efforts through the Conservation Stewardship Program and the regional conservation partnership program. It's a lot of a lot of money going into different pieces, different pots, in a lot of different opportunities that this could open up to local governments in partnership with state government and federal government and non-governmental partners. Want to talk a little bit about kind of making the most of inflation reduction, Reduction Act funding. And what I'm going to cover here comes from the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. They've put together a really useful guide for local leaders related to available funds. Now I'll share the link to that with some other resources at the end. But they suggest four key strategies, strategies to maximize climate action related to these funds. One is to apply for funding this directly available to local governments. As about $47 billion of funding directly for local governments. That includes funds for adopting building codes, air pollution monitoring, implementing greenhouse gas reduction investments. Tax credits including clean, clean electricity production tax credits, clean electricity investments, commercial clean vehicles, alternative fuel, vehicle refueling properties, clean fuel production, advanced energy. So a lot of different opportunities there. Protect against detrimental impacts of new and existing fossil fuel facilities. So they're, they're suggesting work with environmental justice communities to identify facilities of concern. Listen to communities that are impacted by these facilities, and engage with these operators to reduce the negative impacts that may exist from these types of facilities. Support and partner with frontline communities and community-based organizations. So one example of this, there's about $3 billion each to environmental and climate justice block grants and neighborhood access and equity grants to fund community-based organizations directly or in partnership with local government. That can build that local staff capacity or partner with local organizations to really maximize the potential for positive impact from these funds. Then the fourth strategy is engaging coordinate across jurisdictions, regionally and within states, tribes, utilities and ports. And there's really a lot of opportunities for local governments and their partners to set local priorities, build those strategic relationships, support their staff with internal coordination and collaboration. Again, to really maximize the funds that are available through the inflation Reduction Act. These images that you're showing on the screen here come from that C4D tool kit that I mentioned. And then there's kind of a cool graphical representation of a variety of different funding programs related to climate in the inflation reduction ACT. Who that font that funding will flow through. So you can kind of see what are the different programs. Where's the money potentially going to go? As you think about how might you use or apply for some of this funding to make a difference in your community. So here you've got to you on air quality in greenhouse gas reduction and then housing and commercial buildings. And you can kinda see where local governments can attach to different funding programs. Again, some of that directly, some of that in partnership with state and tribal government or community-based organization. Here we see funding for climate resilience and clean vehicles. And again, don't worry about taking all of this in right now, will send these out as well as the link to this toolkit. Again so that, so that you can kinda takes more time to take that and think about how this might be able to impact your community. Then workforce development, again, more funding there. So I know that was a lot of information fairly quickly, but just wanted to give that overview and kind of reiterate the fact that there is significant funding for communities, for local governments in the inflation Reduction Act. For those that are trying to really make an impact on climate adaptation and mitigation in their communities. So did want to just ask, and I'd be curious to hear either in the chat or go ahead and unmute based on what's been shared or maybe anything else you've read about inflation Reduction Act. Did anything spark any ideas about how you might leverage funding in your community related to climate impact. I'll give a minute herself as others, if anyone wants to share any ideas or thoughts in the chat. This is a couple of kind of key resources. Again, starting with that, that climate action and inflation reduction ACT guide really encourage you, even if, even if whether you are a local government or are not directly from local government. And there's really a lot of information in that potential kind of strategies to think through how you might engage around those issues. So I encourage you to take a look at that when we send these resources out. Alright, well, I'm not seeing anything in the chat so well, I think I'm handing it back to you. Yes, indeed. Just very briefly, we will now turn it over to Jen Tucker from ME, DC. And we'll let you guys and Catherine Clarke, sorry, from Smith's group. So we'll let you guys take the ball and run with it. Thanks for being here. Thanks for handling this. Thank you guys. All right. You can see my screen, right. Cool. Alright. So I also want to introduce somebody that's not here, Pablo Mohan. He's my counterpart on our redevelopment ready communities team as a senior planner. And cats can actually be covering a lot of that redevelopment ready communities information that we provide in the form of technical assistance to communities. So first and foremost, the things that we're going to cover today are both technical and financial assistance related to resiliency and sustainability. They are either new tools, are tools that are just regularly in our toolbox that have those sustainable components. So you'll hear a bit about, about both. Before we get into the tools, I want to tell you a little bit more about where we sit in the organization. So as, as the State's Economic Development Corporation, I think I identify as more on the community development side of the house, so to speak. So working with municipalities, local authorities like DTAs, Brownfield authorities, local development finance authorities, various committees at the local government level, local government staff, and even local developers. I put a little sunshine by a couple of the components that you'll see this throughout the next few slides. Really. Things that relate back to sustainability and where, where those tools sit organizationally. So developing attractive places. This part that you'll see on the right here is one of our strategic focus areas that houses these resiliency and sustainable tools that we work with. However, we do see sustainable tools in all six of these focus areas. I'm going to mention one today. That's a recent approval from our Michigan Strategic Fund Board of Directors that just went through yesterday. The other guiding principle of regional impact, I think, is really important because as, as we're seeing a tendency to focus on the environment, on sustainability, on long term resiliency. Having that regional priority makes it a priority for us at the state level. So I guess, you know, even more so lately our focus is then driven from the local level. So it's really important that, that folks are considering the small community regional impact of sustainability. When it comes to their local plans. It'll trickle up. The trickle up effect. We say that business needs place, I'm sorry, plays means business. Talent wants plays, and business wants needs talent. Talent wanting place is really where community vitality comes into play, where we want to make sure that we're investing in sustainable development in our core communities and our downtowns. Keeping that in one vicinity, not not in a sprawling way. The focus that we have in the community development unit is really in this bubble itself. Out of the three bubbles. In that, we have a variety of technical and financial tools focused on downtown centric development. Are mono in the community development area of EMI, DC is supporting the growth of vibrant, diverse, and sustainable communities across Michigan. I swear I didn't make that up for the sake of today's presentation. This has been. On the books for years. We talk about redevelopment ready communities as a planning tool that's more grassroots local unit of government level, helping to prepare communities for more transparent, user-friendly development practices that inspire increased investment in local communities. This is the basis for our entire community development strategy at MEDPAC, the Michigan Main Street program, also one of our technical assistance tools that focuses on downtown organization and the importance preservation and economic development within the traditional downtown alone. We used to be called the Community Assistance Team. Now we're called Community Development Managers, still doing the same work of utilizing financial and technical assistance tools to spurred downtown development. At this point, I want to turn it over to Kat to talk a bit about the RRC resiliency toolkit over the next few slides and how that relates back to our main technical assistance tool for redevelopment readiness and local units of government. Take it away cat. Absolutely. Thank you so much and thank you so much everybody for being on the call today. I actually see quite a few familiar names in the chat. I actually know a little bit about this process, so excited to share with everybody else, as well. As Jenn had mentioned, I worked with a company called Smith Group. We are a large firm, but specifically when it comes to myself and my team and colleagues, we work a lot and Lee urban design space working directly with communities as well as in the sustainability route. And so we were very excited when we were approached by immediacy about the possibility of creating a Michigan specific redevelopment ready community's resiliency toolkits is similar to what Will had shared earlier with the national resource hub for all of these resiliency sources. Whether it be for you guys to help with tracking metrics, whether it'd be to help with applying for funding. We wanted to create something that was a very specific to Michigan and to the specific needs of our Michigan communities. Whether that be Coastal Resiliency, whether that be looking at our specific economy and how everything is working on the ground and what are C was really experiencing when they were partnering with communities. And so this toolkit they've tried to make as comprehensive as possible, you would see a lot of overlap with what we actually saw with that national resource in terms of it includes, like we said, some of those case studies of Michigan communities that have been really successful at being able to put into place some of these resilient projects. We also see funding opportunities and we've tried to really define what resiliency is. Because I know that some people, when they hear an Economic Development Corporation working around resiliency, you would think it's just talking about financial. But the reality is, is that we all want it to be as comprehensive as possible. And to think about several different units which you see in the cornea, its place, people, infrastructure and academy. That wasn't necessarily always the place when we had initially had this conversation. It was on the back of COVID-19 in 2020. And we were originally thinking how are we going to help our communities respond to this major event that was happening, as well as adopt better in the future. So that way we aren't necessarily scrambling, but we're using all these resources that we're building in real time. When we started doing this research, we found that COVID-19 isn't necessarily the first of its kind of, it's not the only event that communities are facing. It's not in this isolated bubble of just one singular health event. We're looking at a massive scope of various factors that are impacting our Michigan communities. So on the next slide, you'll see there have been almost 90 times The state has declared an emergency over the past 50 years. We're talking about around to a year. And that hasn't necessarily been continuous. It's been building speed with time. And what we see is that it covers a range of factors. It's not just COVID-19. It was also extreme winter which we're seeing a lot more especially in the UP follow those communities. We see a lot when it comes to flooding and when it comes to those health disasters, when it comes to infrastructure, we're seeing a lot of communities that have known and I've been preparing for aging infrastructure and who are still working to keep up and use as much as they can in terms of those resources to respond. So how do we look at this and be able to prioritize so many different factors. So when we are building a toolkit, we tried to go through a couple of different phases. First, identifying what has been working extremely successfully so far and using those best practices and those case studies, finding out what were the common denominator of what was successful and what were the major obstacles that communities were facing. Then connecting this to all of the resources and best practices that RSA has already been building and providing. And then assembling all of this into one cohesive it deliverable, one set of tools and resources. Vetted tools and resources that you guys can either use an a singular report. So that way you can duplicate this process and your own personal community. So we're thinking about several things. When we're talking about this report. It's not just shocks, it's also stressors. So shocks are those major events that are potentially abnormalities. They come once or not very often, but they have quite a big impact. That can last for a while where a stressors are things that you are continuously seeing in your community that you are going to be gradually working at. So while the shock would be something like a major flood or a dam breakage, your stressors would instead be the aging infrastructure that led to that event, right? So it's finding both how are we adapting and responding to these shocks, but how are we preparing to base all of these stresses that we're seeing as well? That's essentially broken down into our short-term priorities of how are we going to build awareness and build consensus and our communities about what our major priorities are. How do we build this into the efforts that people are already doing? Whether that be your community master plan here, funding and your CIP, whether that be your own organization in the grants that you're pursuing in the next few years. Looking at government support and those partnerships beyond immediacy or eagle, but also looking at those federal funding opportunities such as mentioned by Eric earlier, looking at your risk knowledge. So understanding and looking at vetted resources such as the nella trackers and ego trackers that are already helping you guys be able to identify what, how this is impacting your community and to share that, as well as how you're responding. But we're also considering some long-term needs. So building that community buy-in, building partnerships. I know that we saw in the chat earlier that comment about the need for additional staff capacity. This is an ever evolving thing that we're seeing. Partnerships come in really key at that point to help build that capacity as much as you can. We're also talking about budget and disaster recovery, right? So it's, it's the preparedness, but it's also the response to whatever you're seeing in your community. To do that, we've split the toolkit essentially into resources that address all of those various factors within four major pillars of resiliency. So the first one is placed, this is your more physical systems that you see in your community. So that would be your natural systems, your parks, your historic buildings and structures, the way that you use, your land use or you're zoning or your annexation, whatever it may be, it's those physical characteristics that your community is facing. Whereas people focuses more on the social side. We're talking about equity. How are you being welcoming to others in terms of safety and security, in terms of access to resources that people have. Whether that be health resources, whether that be affordable housing in a range of affordability for everybody. We're also talking about infrastructure. I know that quite a few people on the call we see toggle between several of these, but they have a big focus on infrastructure and transportation systems, on your water systems, your energy. How all of those work together because they never as isolated as people want to make them. And of course, economy, which is the way are quite a few of these resources that are immediacy and RC specific on the financial side really come into play when you're talking about your workers and their wages. Entrepreneurs, your ability to welcome in small businesses and big businesses. And the partners that you are able to gain along the way to build a healthy region as well as a healthy community for yourself. When you're using the toolkit, we set it up so that way people can take these four pillars and essentially go through this multi-step process of defining their existing conditions. Bedded resources that we had talked about, assessing and ranking individual vulnerabilities to say what it is that you're facing, figuring out what the opportunities are, how you can address them. There are lots of ideas and precedents and best practices in their directly associated with each vulnerability. Then prioritizing the strategies for implementation both what is the easiest to implement, what can you partner with somebody else to implement? And also what might take time, but you still know that you need to address and how do you break that up over time so that way it's still manageable for your community. So all of this is just one small part of the very many resources that the read ready communities have created. They have quite a few best practices for a wider range of things. And so one of them is your resiliency planning and green infrastructure, which is where you'll see it right there in that 2.6. But before you get there, there are all sorts of other resources that you can use as well. Whether it'd be their checklist, whether it be their best practices when you're going through processes such as your master plan, your downtown plans, your capital improvements, and your public participation plants to be sure that they are meeting all those resiliency metrics that we've mentioned throughout the call. Because resiliency never exist within a bubble. It's kind of integrated throughout. And so immediacy. It's really hard to incorporate all of these different findings that we've found throughout this resiliency process within each best-practice on its own as well. All of these can be found on the resiliency portal, which I believe that you'll be getting this presentation after the meeting as well. So that way you can click on the links, check out their resiliency portal there it includes all of those best practices and includes the link to the toolkit. There are quite a few links within the toolkit to other resources that you can use as well. So keep an eye on that one because we're also continuously updating that with new case studies for each region as well. So that way you can kind of get an idea of what's happening within your own backyard. In the meantime, as I mentioned, the reason why we have a lot of familiar faces on this call is because we go through a couple of different ways that we are implementing this toolkit today. One of them is that we're updating this toolkit quarterly. And it's continuously advancing with all the new resources that are out there and with all the new methods and findings that we're learning about, we want to be sure that this grows and adapts. So it's not a static document and you'll be able to find things that are new and relevant all the time. We also are looking at new case studies as we started for each region and building up that library for you all. And then we're also working through a pilot process right now with a couple of communities using this toolkit to create their own resiliency plans and do an assessment of how they're doing within their resiliency moving forward. So exciting stuff Most definitely coming down the pipeline. With that, I'll hand it off to Jen to chat more about some of these financial tools. Thanks so much cat. Like Kat mentioned, these things are all available here. You'll have these links to access later. But not just the resiliency tools, everything related to redevelopment ready communities which is open to any local unit of government anywhere to use. Lots of free library of resources and suggestions on best practices. I'm EDC. We have a slew of financial resources that also assist in redevelopment. Now redevelopment, I always think as the ultimate way to recycle. This is like, of course, it's the most sustainable development practice redevelopment. And that you get to not only preserve existing social and hard infrastructure, but also reusing the physical building itself. So when we prioritize projects that we support, we have three different areas of considerations. The first is regarding local impact. Again, we want to make sure that if it's a local priority for our community, that we are supporting those local priorities, not only based on planning and zoning, but also based on local financial support. Projects that we support always have some little component or even large component of financial support on the local level. We also prioritize working in communities that have a plan in place for their downtown and for their communities. So utilizing our technical assistance tools like Michigan Main Street and redevelopment ready communities, including that resiliency toolkit. Our priorities for us when it comes to spending our money and communities as well. Our second area of consideration is place or place-making. I know it's been a hot word for the past two decades. But we want to make sure that projects that we are supporting our traditional downtown in nature, utilizing the existing core of the community. We love preservation and rehabilitation of historic resources and infill where they're at one time, what once was a building. So everything we do is, is symmetric to that higher density, obviously leading to more sustainable development. Reuse whenever we can. Leveraging, like I said, that existing physical and social infrastructure. And last but not least, third-party certifications like leed certification for building redevelopment. I'll actually after I cover the last section of project considerations are priorities for funding. I'll get into some project examples that we've done over the years. Some as recent as approved yesterday. Over the past few years that just naturally have a sustainability component just by nature of them being redevelopment projects, one of which is a leed certified building. Last but not least, our other category of considerations for financial support relies on financial needs specific to the development. We want to see that other potential funding sources have been maximized. We see in our typical redevelopment capital stack so many other creative sources of funding, some of which do include environmental and sustainable components like pace financing, e.g. On out. So here's a link down here in the bottom left of this page. But this is a great place to go to find out projects that we have supported. And I'm EDC in your community or your region. I just happened to pull up a snapshot of the UP over a five-year period because that's the area I represent. But you can do this in any region, any date range throughout the state at this link in the bottom left, just thought that might be a cool resource to pop in if you're looking for examples of projects that we've supported in the past. So this just in yesterday, the Michigan strategic fund, who is our Board of Directors at MDC, supported a 3 million dollar performance-based grant award for shop house park in market. This proposed development is very centered on innovation and technology, specifically as it relates to the outdoor wreck and mobility sectors. The site itself will include eight buildings and have live work units that are really there to spur innovation on-site live work, research and development, incubator type activity. The cool and sustainable component about this that I wanted to mention is that that feature has mass timber construction. So that type of construction with naturally lower CO2 emissions. And we've seen this in three of our recently approved projects in the UP alone. So really exciting to see that little, little snippets, little component of sustainability. Technology. An electrified trail is going to be part of this as well, and electrifying trails in the region itself. So we should be seeing some really cool, innovative things come out of market over the next few years. Really exciting opportunity. The main way in which we support projects in community development for downtowns is through the community revitalization program. This is our I mean, I want to call it our building recycling program, but it really can be for new development in the downtown as well. We qualify buildings based on these, these bullet points here that also align with one of our other tools for Brownfield redevelopment that I'll touch on next. So same exact qualifiers. Most every building in downtown meets one of these, so it's easy to qualify. But what we like to leverage is significant private investment, increased tax base. We love to see that mixed-use, residential on top commercial on bottom development. And obviously anything that has sustainable or green components is also a huge priority. We analyze the financial performance of the real estate through a pro forma template, which is a really great resource and determining the financial viability of a project. Obviously, sustainable components and the operational budget around keeping the building up and running are big factors and that, as well as the capital stack. So a lot of those other resources come into play when we analyze that gap. One example of a project recently supported that has some cool stuff I wanted to feature outside of my region a bit too. So this one's in Kalamazoo, a mixed use development on a contaminated site. The cool thing about this was the lead certification, in addition to adding 45 residential units, I know Residential has been such a high priority, but the building received leed Platinum certification. So very, very exciting project with a lot of cool components like this. So these are all pictures from the current site today. So you'll see some on-site stormwater management, local flora and fauna, solar panels, outdoor spaces. Really cool components there in Kalamazoo. That's again using the community revitalization program. This this project also is pretty large in size to the point that it did use a number of other resources, one of which I'm going to touch on here, Brownfield Tax Increment Financing. This is a local and state supported tool initiated at the local level to help redevelopment redevelopment of brownfield properties in Michigan, we have a pretty broad definition of Brownfield. But on a national level, a Brownfield is known as a property that's contaminated or proceed to be contaminated. We extend that definition to blighted functionally obsolete and historic resources. So here's an example. This is a before and after our historic before and current photo of a Brownfield redevelopment project in market. But what Brownfield Tax Increment Financing does is it reimbursed as a developer for some of the upfront costs that are attributed to the conditions of the site being challenged. Whether it's contamination that's being cleaned up or blight that's being eliminated, e.g. so it's about leveling the playing field between a Greenfield Development. Property that's never been developed and reuse and redevelopment of a site that is probably likely in an area where infrastructure already exists. I can't I can't stress the importance of that enough when it comes to both the sustainability of the infrastructure as it has been such a challenge over time and maintaining that. But also in regards to our municipal budgets. So here's an example, also a before and after picture. If you can see in that smaller picture on the left where it says initial value. This is how Tax Increment Financing works to reimburse developers for for exorbitant expenses that that are attributed to the nature of that site. So here we have a single-story strip style development. I like to draw the eye to the liquor store right here. You'll see the liquor store here, that same liquor store right here. How about that? So in this first picture we have a single story strips style, more auto centric development in this larger picture here you can see in that same space how higher density development has occurred and that increment in value between the difference between the two. That increment is what is used to reimburse developers for those Brownfield expenses. So things like demolition, let us Bess this abatement, environmental assessment, environmental remediation, and due care. All of those things are reimbursable to the developer with the increment based on the increase in taxable value. Here's one of the most delicious Brownfield projects that I've had in the Upper Peninsula to 31 West Washington. This this is a patisserie downtown market with the best croissant arguably in the State of Michigan. So this project utilize both eagle and MED see Tax Increment Financing through Brownfields and the local Brownfield redevelopment authority as well. Significant private investment, leveraged job creation, activated an entire building that was blighted and had been severely damaged years prior from fire, vacant for a long time, editing to residential units up top, and a two-story commercial space below. Last but not least, a tool that I wanted to feature today too, because so many of the projects within this tool have sustainability components is our public spaces, community places crowdfunding matching grant. This is specifically and only for community owned space or non-profit on space. It is a partnership that we have and started a number of years ago with the Michigan Municipal League and Patronas City, which is a Detroit based crowdfunding platform. And it allows for communities to activate place, that is for the public. So it's all done through an online crowdfunding campaign, really requiring a lot of involvement from some local champion taking the lead on getting the word out. We ever really great success rate. So far, this is as of last night, we have funded 1,487 projects with this tool, you can see the amount of money that's leveraged from the community through crowdfunding. $30 million. Here, 25 million matched from us at MAC with the true crowd represented here with 164,000 people. That's a lot of representation for people contributing to these public place making projects. We've got a number of examples because we've had so many projects like you can see in that number. But, but what you'll see is you'll see the project goal here. Look at the Soo St. Marie example. The goal of $50,000 to support place-making components on a trail that is already both a local and Michigan Department of Transportation project, the Soo St. Marie power can now trail this additional $50,000. Ask really leverages double from each donation because what it does is every time somebody makes a donation, once the community reaches their goal of 50,000, MEDPAC doubles that amount. So when you say Marie reached their $50,000 goal, they received a 50,000 dollar grant from MEDPAC. This allowed them to do really just some cool place-making attributes along that, all along that multi-use trail there. I wanted to share this example. This is a current open project that you are able to donate two now, if you are here with us live today, or watching this in December of 2022. The project evergreen is a ten acre park in northwest detroit. Lots of sustainable components here just by nature of the public project itself. But as you can see, their goal is 50,000 there at 29,000 so far with 32 patrons and only nine days left. So there's a link on the bottom of this presentation here. If you guys feel like contributing. But it's a great way to really get a jump-start on sustainable public place making projects in your community. This, this is kinda cool. I snapped this from their campaign, talking about some of the attributes of the project and really tying in a lot of sustainability, interpretation, education components to this public project. Happy to take any questions regarding our technical or financial tools, how they might relate back to your community. Or you're welcome to grab our contacts here and reach out at anytime. I'll keep that up for a moment. Thank you, Jen and cat, anybody have any questions? Alright, well, I have an evaluation that I'm going to launch here. If you would please take that before you sign off, that would be a huge help for us. If you do have any questions, we still have some time. Or otherwise, I will make sure that we have a question in the chat. Go ahead, Gail. Thank you. Yes. I just wanted to maybe have each of the presenters comment a bit about creating the links with tourism. Why should tourism? People whose responsibility is tourism linked to these broader community issues? And why should other community organizations be paying attention to tourism as a piece of this as it impacts their community. I think we sometimes just sort of make assumptions since we work in these areas. But I think it's important to be sometimes a little bit more overt Gender. Catherine, would you like to take a stab at that? Absolutely. If you want to jump first and then pass it off to huge, and I think everybody can take this code a few different ways. But in my personal experience and an urban designer working with a wealth of communities, we're seeing a rise in tourism. Once again, I know it was really impacted by COVID, but especially when it comes to ecotourism, that's such a huge part of the economy when it comes to Michigan as a whole. I'm first starting communities. It most certainly dominates. And what we see is that tourism effects so many parts of daily life when it comes to communities, whether that be pressures on your housing, making sure you have enough places for people stay when they're visiting your community. Being able to make sure that that feeds a lot of your other workforce as well. We also see that that has a really great impact sometimes on the public spaces for communities, whether that be building a really strong downtown are really strong Main Street helping with your park system, helping with your coast. And it can really help to feed some of those forces if you're able to use it. Well, but it also has a huge impact both ways, right? So if you don't have enough places for people to stay or if they don't have enough other things to do when they're not out on the lake within your community, then they might go somewhere else and vice versa. And so you want to be sure that your district, that attention as much as possible to make sure you have a really healthy balance between a good community for your residents were always there and for your residents and visitors who are coming, whether it's just very day or if they come and they decide that they want to stay. I think it's really important to have that holistic view as a community when it comes to tourism. Jen, do you add on yeah, that was great. Very well said cat. I think it's really as our tools are really, financial tools are really centered on downtown, both private building rehab and public space. Very much a use for it was by both the resident and the visitor. I think it is essential that we are planning for both of those things when it comes to long term resiliency and sustainability of our local resources. So I can't stress enough the importance of of positioning communities for redevelopment readiness. I think a lot of that really is reflected in the visitor and tourists community as well. I mean, the impact is exponential. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Let's see. Gail has a follow-up in the chat. How do you use this as part of the tourism promotion? As part of tourism promotion and messages that tourism, that tourists see, either when they are choosing a place to visit or while they are in a community? Well, I can I can take maybe a crack at that. As I've been thinking about listening to cat and Jens comments. One thing that we on the tourism team say a lot when we talk about, especially our first impressions Tourism Program. And I gotta give a shout out to Andy Northrop on this is, well, first off, we all know that Michigan is a tourism is a major part of the economy in the state of Michigan, more so than in many other states. And we also know that even if your town or your community isn't a quote unquote tourist town, you're still having people pass through all the time. And the, the more your community can be positioned to to pull them in, capture some of those pass-through dollars, show them what your community has to offer. That's going to produce compounding benefits related to, you know, maybe they'll come back or maybe they'll even if the time comes there, they're looking at your place to work remotely, say, or start a business or retire. They'll have more exposure to your community and they'll make you more competitive going forward in this economy that's going to be more and more focused about, around remote work and community of choice and things like that. So.