Avondale Estates recently named four new members to its seven-person Downtown Development Authority including Randy Beebe, the first active city commissioner to serve on the DDA.
“We attended several DDA seminars,” Mayor Jonathan Elmore said, “where [experts] emphasized we appoint a [commissioner] to create cohesion between the commission and DDA. Our two boards have pretty much operated independently from one another.”
The other new members are Dave Deiters, a retired CEO of Highland Consulting (his term lasts through Oct. 2019), attorney/developer Sam Collier (Jan. 2016), and Matt Delicata (Jan. 2016), a public/private partnership specialist for developer Carter. Beebe’s term runs through Jan. 2017.
Elmore wants a funded DDA that’ll be invested with power to buy property, take out a bond, develop property and market the city’s downtown, among other things. He said the next step is to negotiate an intergovernmental service agreement that would allow the transfer of money from the city to the DDA and would also include a formal mission statement for the Authority.
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