County staff recommended using the recently developed Thomas Street RFP template as the basis for redevelopment requests for Thomas Street and River Drive properties and said they expect to bring a broad authorizing resolution to the Human Resources, Finance and Property Committee for consideration next week.

Administrator Leonard told committees that Thomas Street RFP language is a strong template drawn from other jurisdictions and that staff plan to bring a formal authorizing resolution to HR Finance next week. Staff cautioned there is at least one remaining tenant at the River Drive location that receives internet service through county facilities, which creates an IT timing consideration but does not prevent releasing an RFP for Thomas Street concurrently.

Staff said the Thomas Street template has been reviewed by several staff members and can be modified to incorporate committee feedback (for example, including property-tax generation as an evaluation criterion, as suggested earlier). The committee discussed logistics, including timing, site walkthroughs and whether the county should schedule separate outreach events to allow potential proposers and existing tenants to coordinate.

No final resolution for Thomas Street was adopted at this meeting; the item will return to HR Finance next week with a proposed authorizing resolution for release of the RFP under the Thomas Street template.