Call to order. Everybody, even though the room is empty, we need to speak into the microphone.
Is that right, Jason? Yes.
Let's call to order the village council work session for August
11th, 2026. We'll be taking up three general business items and then we will move into a
closed session pursuant to North Carolina's general statute. The first item will be
the given Memorial Library construction update.
So I'll turn it to you, Doug, since I do not see Carlton.
Yeah, we'll move through this pretty quickly.
This is how it's been progressing over time,
and we got here the update for June, the picture.
Just stop, I love these aerial photos,
so I get, just give me a minute on that one.
That on the, I'm just trying to get my bearings here.
Okay, that green roof on the right is the hut next to the police station.
Yeah, the building of grounds.
Yeah, building of grounds.
Okay, now it's coming into sight.
Okay.
When you drive by, the back doesn't look as cleared out as it looks in this photo.
Yep.
Yeah, right.
You don't realize the parking lot area is, you know, as much as cleared out as overhead.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thanks, anything to, 100% 100% looks like it's moving.
Yeah, yeah, so in the past 30 days from when this was prepared,
so the backfill and the stone were put in, the sewer was put in,
the vapor barrier, and they installed the rebar.
So here's some pictures of that stuff.
Yeah, one day I drove by, I was like, why is it all blue?
But put the vapor barrier in.
So, some pictures of the construction.
So the next 30 days they're going to begin the metal framing, which we can see that started.
Yeah, so today.
You can actually see stuff up.
And then the concrete walls and footings will be put in and the beams for the storefronts.
So that is what it looked like yesterday.
Okay.
I looked about the same today when I drove by, huh?
It looks, we're going vertical here.
Yes, yes.
So, as far as you and Carl are concerned,
we're on schedule and progressing.
Okay.
Questions, that's all I have, so.
No, I appreciate the report like this, and.
Is there a, just a detailed construction plan
that suggests that we are on time plus or minus a couple of days.
Yeah, yeah, we are on time.
Yeah, so they're...
Good.
So far, Carlton has solved every issue that has come his way, so...
Good.
Great job.
Okay, that includes...
Unless someone has a question for Doug, that concludes item A.
Item B is a review and discuss the 2026 business survey results
of which we were all participants in.
So go ahead, Doug.
Yeah, so a couple of things to note.
So this is the surveys that we actually received.
Either they were handwritten and we entered it in,
or they followed our links and submitted it.
It does not include any information
while you were just talking to people
if they didn't actually fill something out.
Obviously, we couldn't include that in the data.
But we only got, so 35 people opened the survey, and then only 22 said that they actually owned
a business in the town.
And then only about 10 answered the downtown specific questions.
So...
Doug, 35 opened it, but how many was it sent to?
I mean, we have a lot more.
I'd have to double-check.
I mean, there's a lot of...
I mean it was it sent to 70 people or more than that there's like 70 businesses downtown, but this went to all of them
So okay, so I'm just trying to gauge your response rate. That's all we ever update that list
I mean, I would assume for closed businesses that type of thing. Okay, I have an old LLC. That's
Eight years old. Yeah. Yeah closed down for a long time. I still got a survey
You got a business for it. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess we're not very good at cleaning them up
But it was that this year or was that I got this year's okay. Yeah, do we have space to incorporate any more if we get them?
If we get more feedback, yeah, we can just put it in but
so I guess what I was kind of
Leaning towards is like you went out and talked to all these people. So you probably have just as much
of a feel for
What people said and I was thinking the conversation might turn more towards what your feedback was a person rather than what this
actually survey says because this is only ten people and you each talk to ten people
too, so you have as much feedback as this does.
Yeah, let's go through the survey, let's go through what you have and then we'll chime
in.
Yeah, so what types of businesses responded, most of them restaurants, but then we had
retail and professional services as well.
I will go with a quick, slow me down if you want to.
The majority of them have been here more than ten years.
That's very – I find that interesting.
But that's an indication we don't have too
much turnover to begin. When you drive down Chincaquinn, the most recent turnover was the
purple thistle. But otherwise, everything is very stationary. So I think it's, you
know, somewhat of a credit to our – wait, Pinehurst is set up and the type of businesses
we have down there. Interesting.
So this is the number of employees that they have, so most are very small.
Mostly their space.
Only one actually owned the building and they responded, so that.
That is a fascinating thing.
It's not surprising, I don't think.
I wouldn't have guessed 20 out of 21.
That's what I wouldn't have guessed, but okay.
Not a lot of changes forecasted by any of these businesses.
Most rated the business climate as pretty good.
That's better than I thought we would hear.
So yeah, this asks kind of like what their business atmosphere was like.
So most of them said it was about the same.
So when asked what the leading challenges were, parking.
It specifically says employee parking there.
Yeah, employee parking, yeah.
I think it was both were mentioned.
Yes, that is true.
Customer traffic.
My understanding of that is like customers walking by,
customers coming into your store.
I'm surprised if you go back for a second.
and staffing didn't get a higher response.
Well, I think that the customer traffic
is consistent with the last residence survey we did
where 60% of the people said they never shop downtown.
Right.
And we just got the residence survey results last night.
I haven't, they haven't dove into it that much, but.
Will that be on September?
I don't remember what the responses were to that question.
Most of them said they were downtown but all the downtown questions really only 10 responded
to them.
So downtown business climate, 8 out of 10 said it was good or excellent.
So here are the downtown conditions.
So, there's a lot of information on this, so I'll leave it on here for a minute.
Yeah, please.
Just a general question.
Given our efforts, was there an increase of surveys returned or same?
On the business side, less, yeah.
But you guys all went and talked to them, so a lot of those people may not have like
submitted a survey because they felt like they gave you the feedback in person.
But in my case, a number of the actual owners were on vacation and I left my business card
with my cell phone and got zero calls back.
So I'm actually thinking because I'm going to be a bachelor at the end of this week
going back and knocking on some more doors to try to tune up some more responses.
I repeatedly emailed all of my contacts and got zero return.
I didn't email anybody. I went and tracked them down.
Well, I did both and had three basic good meetings.
I had a lot of incorrect information.
That's an issue.
I list specifically one building.
The Maples building?
77 Cherokee.
The one kind of behind the theater building?
Yeah.
Yeah, that one is a little bit out of sight out of mind.
No soliciting signs.
There was no one there.
The door's locked.
I mean, it was locked.
I had the Village Chapel and the contact there was a reverend that I've never heard of.
And when I went and met with reverends, Kester Ashley, who I know, and we went through
the survey.
He was fine.
But I said, before you, or two preachers ago, was there a guy named Reverend, blah, blah,
blah?
He says, I never heard of a guy.
So there is a, there needs to be some way to clean it up a little more so it's not
as outdated.
Because I didn't, I mean, that's a perfect example.
Well, you can, they're not exactly great at responding to us, that's-
Well, there was an email sent out or something on the website, our website, we need to update
your information.
I took that to Pinehurst Business Partners, too, and told them the same thing.
Oh, good for you.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know if it did any good or not.
We did get a few updates from it, so.
But this is very, you know, as you look at this, excellent traffic flow.
That's pretty interesting that you get an excellent on that topic.
It's equal to poor.
Landscaping, of course, is something we're very proud of.
And it's demonstrated in that.
And, okay, well, it's helpful to see.
Yeah.
And the biggest problem showing up on this is employee parking.
Which...
Now, let me ask you a question.
Does that mean there aren't spaces in the sandlot?
So, I have, I can, I used to look at it every single day via a camera and there was only
one day that it was full and that was because the Village Chapel had an event.
But other than that, I have never seen it completely full and there were always spaces
available.
So, what they're complaining about, I'm not exactly sure because, you know, within
a three minute walk, you can park and get to the place.
I found a restaurant in particular a very popular restaurant who has a lot of employees
coming in at the same time in the late afternoon and that's when all of their customers are
coming in too and they had a part of employee parking.
and sometimes they also have employees who work.
Different shifts coming in at a time when there's something else going on. That's the kind of thing I think is the problem.
Interesting to say, I'm looking at my notes from another restaurant downtown, popular one as well. Parking is way too little.
Please, building parking garage for my employees. That's interesting. Yeah, I just ran across it.
We're trying to add five more spots right down there.
Also, I mean, the one by the Pinecrest Inn, I mean, that one's usually also available.
Well, in the evening, that one actually gets a little more full, because Pinecrest in Patron's
park there.
Anyway.
Okay.
Yeah.
So this is looking over history.
So yeah, for some reason, in 2024, Landscape More Appearance kind of took a little bit
of a drop.
Those are a little weird numbers there, but yeah, kind of a, so 9 out of 10 said landscaping
was good, cleanliness also good, sidewalk condition, walkability, kind of in line, maybe a little
better than past years, parking availability, those numbers are all over the place, so.
Okay, so most said the three-hour parking land event did not make it harder, but unfortunately
a lot of them said it didn't make an impact either, so.
But that's okay.
Yeah.
We didn't make it worse.
Nothing made it worse.
I mean, about half of them said it improved.
Okay.
Satisfaction mixed.
Let's see.
Neutral.
Satisfy.
Yeah.
Close call.
Well, seven out of ten, oh that's right, I don't count the neutrals, I didn't want to do that.
Yeah, so whatever.
This ETC, did the graphics?
No, this was...
That's right.
Artificial intelligence made these.
If you go back one slide,
the neutral, I would have left the rankings constant.
It's just, I don't need to have the bars increasing necessarily.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Downtown improvements.
Parking and marketing.
Okay, let's tackle their two issues.
What on the marketing side should we or could we do?
Or what have we postponed doing or what have we thought about?
So, one of the things we talked about at our last business listening session was doing
August Friday.
So, we're actually doing that right now, and I meant to talk about it at the beginning
of the meeting.
So, Fridays, we're encouraging everyone to do sidewalk sales, put some of their merchandise
out on the sidewalk, kind of generate a little bit of energy, and then you can
get a ticket at the Welcome Center for a free cupcake.
And so last week, yeah, we had a few people come and get it and I guess we'll see the mayor there on Friday.
Is there an implication in that that maybe not because of the way the question was asked,
but a comment that I have heard not infrequently is that they don't feel the resort supports them or markets for them.
It beats against them.
Well, if they try to capture every dollar they can't, they're a for-profit enterprise.
I mean, this is kind of how capitalism works.
I think the resort is helping them much more than it's ever hurting them because they bring
a lot of people to visit, fine-hurst, and they just, one, they don't all play golf
because they come with spouses that might not.
and I'm not saying it's justified I'm saying it's a comment that I hear not
infrequently the only on the additional parking we have Larry at work and I think
I think he's made a difference whether people want to admit it or not I I
certainly I think it was a smart move we've got on the runway the five
additional spots down there and by the theater building and is there any place
else that we're adding a spot or not dug downtown do you know of anything where
we're squeezing something in somewhere no I don't think so we did put up a sign
on the backside of the you know the trees by the library to get into oh
Yeah, that says golf cart parking available. You can go park in the trees. So
There we can do that. So that that's first golf park parking there
Okay, yeah, and again, there always seems to be spaces available in the
In the sand lot except for when there's events things like that, so
Okay, so this questions regarding downtown events
Some somewhat beneficial, here's the feedback.
Well, this is the trade off of,
I think in a lot of the folks' mind is that
the events are not downtown, some of them.
That's some that used to be, and now they're elsewhere.
Yeah, live after five is the one.
That's tough to overcome, yeah.
Yeah, here's my quote from the restaurant.
Food businesses hate that live at five
is in the arboretum.
This person wanted to take the whole thing over,
and I was like, well, I don't think we could do that.
But I don't know, is there any,
was there a question on here
about live at fives in general, or?
I mean, it was one of the special events listed.
Oh, okay, so. Yeah.
Right here.
Any buildings?
Okay.
I mean, also a little weird
because eats, beats, and brews
is essentially the exact same thing
as live after five now.
So I don't know why that's different.
Yeah, who knows, but.
A person may have been only one negative.
The
reason there's eight no impacts is because they're not down there anymore.
I'll give them an A for accuracy here. I believe that piece of data.
Yes, there is no impact.
No, it's an interesting point.
At least they didn't. Well, once a negative.
I don't know what is the downside for the one person
I mean people they don't like roads being closed they they think it makes it
more difficult to get to their actual brick-and-mortar business yes okay that's
to the more interesting one which is on Filledge Place, right there, yeah, we're good to
move on. Yeah, street closures and parking are the, naturally.
And street closures, the comment that I hear there is do we have to do it as early as we
do it? They're not opposed to doing it, they understand why, but can we start a little
later? I don't know. Yeah, and that's been something we've
talked about and staff has consistently said, you know, we do it as late as we possibly
can.
So is that basically a personnel issue, the number of people it takes to put barriers
up and what have you?
And also, if there's cars that are within the barrier, you have to get the police
to come and get them out or you have to like kind of wait them out and that takes
a long time.
We noticed that during the parade of nations there seemed to have been a lot more cars
than normal stuck inside once the parade happens.
It created a little bit of a dangerous situation because they were trying to leave right after.
Yes, so that specific is not our event and they specifically requested to not close down the roads.
Then that's the result of why.
Okay, alright.
Yeah, do they support additional downtown programming?
It's one reason why we decided to do the movie at the park to try to address some of this.
What's the date of that movie at the park?
the 17th of September.
Oh, Constitution Day, perfect.
Okay, we need to promote that a little on the website.
Do we think we could do live music
on a smaller scale downtown?
Yes, and that's something to talk to
Pioneers Business Partners about,
it's like, if you want to,
like if we have a stage or whatever,
like you could have someone just with a microphone
and a speaker and they can just sing
and have a little bit of live music, create some atmosphere, we're totally fine with that,
but there hasn't been a whole lot of, like, yeah, go do that.
I hadn't thought about that, but I think a permanent stage might lend itself to more
feeling of credibility and regularity of where to congregate.
Agreed.
That's a plus.
Obviously, it's a year away or so, but it's a plus.
Yeah.
Again, parking, question about what should we be looking at in the next five years.
Parking is at the top of the list.
Oh, sorry.
You know, there's not a lot of empty storefronts.
The only one I recall right now is the old 727 lounge.
Yeah, it feels, yeah.
And it's there for a price.
Yeah.
Can you go back one, Doug, please?
So public restrooms, they're right in there.
You know, if you want more people down there, we have to be able to accommodate the needs
of people down there.
And I think at some point, not tonight, we need to give some thought to a self-cleaning
standalone public rest facility somewhere on the Village Green, somewhere near the
archives.
But not in the archives, we clarify that today.
And I agree with that not in the archives, but there are technologies that would allow us to do that do it in a clean and safe fashion
Anyway for another another time. I thought about that
We're gonna be moving the welcome center
Yeah
I'm wondering if we could put more restrooms in the theater building
well
You know it's a private building
so
So the landlord would want to do that.
So I don't know if you should go back to the old paid toilet days.
I don't see the owners not going to put in a restroom.
I have thought, I mean Kevin's idea might be great.
I've also thought like if there were a small storefront somewhere
that we could just rent and have it as the public bathroom is for downtown
downtown, that might also work as well. Or maybe we reach out to the resort and say,
when you redo the casino building, make sure you have some public restrooms in there.
I mean, it's on the horizon, but I do agree with Kevin to the point of there's something
in a small footprint that possibly could be done without creating a large scale situation.
And yeah, we just we need to keep it downtown find her is appropriate. I mean it's not going to be a Porta John out there
Well to Kevin's point, you know
Vienna
Self-cleaning toilet the thing they go back into the wall and come back out clean or they're just a big circle bowl
And they just clean themselves. I'm sure they're not cheap though. We can look at that
Yeah, so most are not all that familiar with Village Place
Well, that's on our next month agenda, right?
Yeah.
Most are obviously in alignment with that are unsure of what to think about a village place.
And when they have concerns, it's about additional parking, retail competition, traffic, lots
of character.
All right.
Funny thing about retail competition I think if I've maintained for a long
time that I'm not sure we have enough enough physical square footage to create
retail critical mass. If you compare to to Broad Street let's say in Southern
Pines they just have enough more space that you can go park one place and walk
up and down the street. Not unlike going through a big mall. No one parks next to every store
they want in the mall. They park once and they walk up and down in the mall, but everything
is there. And I think it's a tough one for us to solve and almost bifurcating downtown
between village places. It doesn't make it better. It looks more like competition
rather than creating critical mass. I don't have an answer for that, but maybe the
The bias, as we think through it, is a little more residential-oriented and a little less
retail-oriented.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So this is, do you use village services?
So fire inspections, everyone has to have those, so they use that a lot.
But some of our other services aren't used a lot, which is pretty normal.
Reflective of a municipality's responsibilities. Yeah, my responsibility is public safety. And so what do they use widely?
fire inspections
police patrol in
public emergency response
So this
Make sense. Yeah, yeah, it does. And I think maybe we're, I think we were doing a better job with our neighborhood patrols going through downtown more frequently, and I think that's beginning to be noticed, which is good.
Yeah. Right, yeah, so this is satisfaction with village services. Again, again. Very small sample sizes. Small sample size, but it is.
9-12 is satisfied with the village communication and the next one is they all want email.
And let's see, most respondents view the village as very responsive.
It's good news.
So this is kind of like an overall takeaway.
way so parking is got mentioned a lot some events we need to do some more
communication on Village Place communication seems to be good and they
want us to maintain email yeah so I guess now what do we want to do differently
because of this and because of the feedback that you guys might have
received in person so I kind of throw that out there for discussion well
one on the Village Place subject we have some work to do because that's what we
were planning we're not rushing into anything so we're gonna have a meeting
in September we'll get a little more flavor for where we are and possibilities
that exist so I consider that somewhat on schedule okay we'll just know more in
month. On the parking, we can keep Larry at it, and we can add those five spots and see
what happens. It may be just one of those perennial things. It doesn't matter what you do.
Someone
on events,
to me the big thing that sort of sticks with certain people is the move of
the live after five. That's the only thing that seems to have captured attention of downtown
business owners and it's understandable because there's a lot of people who are not hanging
out there after live after five. Yeah, for four nights, yeah, out of the year. I think
probably the best approach to deal with that is partner with the Pioneers Business Partners
on smaller events that we can do to activate downtown or activate the park. And whether
that's a, someone suggested a poetry reading, I would probably not go to that, but if
But there is a smaller bands or movies in the park, things like that, or things we could
do.
We'll see how September 17th works out, but that may be a good start of something where
we can find some other classic movies that will attract people around a certain event.
I did have a thought of something else that slipped my mind.
Some other comments?
possibly we have it just an overall conversation about live at five at some
point in time a little separate than this I think that moving it from the
village to the arboretum possibly has displaced some of our current
citizens that maybe don't want to park and then walk the far way and I think
it's maybe servicing a little bit of a broader community beyond pioneers I
just want to make sure that we have the opportunity for our citizens who
You don't want to park and walk with their chairs.
I know what my thought was.
Maybe what we can do, live after five events, is we can provide complimentary bus or trolley
rides from the arboretum to the Village Green for an hour after it ends.
Yeah, and then that at least we had we'll have so people could actually park there
We could do it. We had going both ways one, you know
at five from five to six and another one from whatever it is eight to nine and
And that's it that way people can actually park their car downtown get on a
Bus for lack of better phrase
Go up there listen to the music and eat and whatever and then get on a bus and come back to where their car is
And maybe I'll hang out around downtown
Yeah, that's a possibility I think we have used the bus to shuttle people from like behind the fire station parking area to a little bit closer
I can ask if you know how popular that was or if we could redeploy that to drive between downtown or not
It's the only idea I could come up with to just try to get people to end their night
Going downtown at downtown at one point time there was a brief conversation about partnering with southern pines as well as Aberdeen about creating
reading some sort of a bus loop or a trolley loop or something. I don't know if that probably
never took off. We might have asked CVB to fund that. I think if I remember a couple
years ago, and I don't know if that's an opportunity, but that could spur some downtown movement
as well. So I think Moore County has talked about doing transportation services, something
like that.
But I don't know how quickly they're moving in that direction.
Just spit balling things, they would move people around and also drop them off to like the mayor's point.
One actually piece of feedback that I received for downtown is kind of accent lighting.
It's pretty dark down there, especially in the winter.
Uplighting?
Yes, that.
I've had that. I've had someone mention that to me.
I actually think it would make it really nice
So I got a talk to a couple of light vendors. It was like a hundred thousand dollars
I think maybe that might be something we could apply to that CBB grant
To pay maybe we do you know do it in phases
The other difficult part about that is we have a lot of like islands that would need the lighting and then you
to cut up the road and the road is fairly new pavement so maybe as the right
before we repave the road we can do something like that that's a real
impediment to seniors when it's dark there with the irregular surfaces and
trying to navigate those yeah real impediment for them we can start where
it's easier right yeah see how first phase is anywhere we don't have to cut
through a road to get to it and we we try it and then no maybe the next
face.
Alright, anything else on this? Nope. Alright.
And the few items we kicked
around, Doug, where appropriate, you can put them on a future agenda.
This is just
a real quick, we met a few months ago, I can't remember when it was, maybe it was
June, talked about communications, so got some good feedback from you, so
a few things we're trying to do. One, tomorrow is our new relaunch of the monthly e-newsletter.
So we're going to have a bunch of articles and information going out that applies to
everyone. I have a question. How many e-mail newsletter
recipients do we have? Not whether they open it up. What's the size of our list?
I would have to check it well. I think that's very important for us to the main one is it's pretty large
It is opt-in so it is through constant contact, so opt-in and out whenever you want and
On the website is the ability to opt-in
But we will
Send this to all NAC members as well NAC members can spread it as as they can and actually maybe
One of the things we should put on there is how do you sign up for this in case it just
gets passed on through an email.
The other thing Jeremy mentioned this is the kiosk, kind of using that a little bit more.
So we added a few things on that.
So like here is places to eat downtown and then we have another one that's like places
you can shop downtown and another one that says go to the welcome center and find
out all the information.
They're another logical place for another kiosk.
That comment was filtered through from some of the merchants, directional.
Well yeah, there was one that says you need a sign that says you are here.
There is a map on the back of the kiosk with the sign that says you are here.
Does the kiosk have the ability to measure how many people go to it and ask questions?
The kiosk is just a it's basically a poster board it's a billboard that but
there's no because I don't have any idea how many people use it I mean it's like
what I mean you can't use it you just look at I understand so I've been so it
makes you wonder how reliable or how many people rely on it most people this
is their kiosk I totally agree walking around town with this if the kiosk ever
needed significant repairs, expensive repairs, I think we should consider whether or not
it's valuable.
That's my question. I'm trying to get some metrics for some of this stuff because I just
don't know how to make an answer.
And the other thing is, we mentioned if we could highlight, maybe make it easier for
We have the website that highlights what happened, what it actually might mean to you as a regular
resident.
It's been great, by the way.
Yeah.
I have a suggestion.
We may already be doing it.
But when we say the council passed resolution X, a resident ought to be able to link to
that, so that – and maybe they do.
I didn't pay attention enough when I looked at it the other day because that helps
actually go see what we did and rather than just hearing we did something
they'll see that oh my gosh they're going to do this they're setting up an
advisory committee that's going to do this it's going to meet so many days a
week and so on so that's my one generic suggestion for our highlights Doug the
quality of the graphics the inviting nature of this I think it's a real
big step forward. So congrats.
Thank you. If you click in meeting highlights, it takes
you to this link. It takes you to this link. Okay, so it doesn't take you to the video of
the council meeting. No, it does not. I mean, that is, we have it here. You can get to
it. A minute's available. Well, that's a plus. That's a plus. Yeah. Or the YouTube
channel that's that's a plus okay I just trying to help these the residents who
are curious for more information after we give them some tidbits that's really
all they have on that comments folks all in the right direction with
that
we're
going to leave you.
With that, we can go to a, we could go to a closed session if someone made a motion.
I moved to enter the closed session pursuant to NCGS 143-318.11a6 to consider the qualifications,
competence, performance, character, fitness, conditions of appointment, or conditions of
initial employment of an individual public officer, employee, or prospective public
officer or employee, or to hear or investigate a complaint, charge, or grievance by or against
an individual public officer or employee.
We have a motion.
Second.
In a second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Okay.
We are in a closed session so.
Yeah.
Yeah, if you're...