# Jamie Gates Jamie Gates is a senior staff member of the [[Conway Area Chamber of Commerce]] / [[Conway Development Corporation]] who served as the **primary developer-side spokesperson to City Council on Project Stratus**. Gates addressed Council at the April 1, 2025 Special Council Meeting on the substantive MOU terms; addressed Council again at the April 22, 2025 regular meeting on the annexation and rezoning ordinances, including responding to opposition testimony from [[Alan Rice]]; and authored the April 1, 2025 [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence]] memo to the Mayor and Council laying out the downstream regulatory sequencing through annexation, rezone, IRB issuance, and infrastructure construction. ## Role and affiliations - Conway Area Chamber of Commerce / Conway Development Corporation — dual role typical of CDC/Chamber staff. Email: `[email protected]` (note `.org`, not the City's `.gov`). - Works alongside [[Brad Lacy]] (Chamber CEO/President) and [[Corey Parks]] (Chief Economic Development Officer) on Project Stratus. ## Appearances in the corpus - **April 1, 2025** — addressed City Council at the Special Council Meeting on the MOU's substantive terms: "this project is different from past community development projects in that it would be a long-term project with many re-visitations for planning and permitting processes. He pointed out to them the terms in the MOU stating that the City would not increase the costs for the permitting and fees greater than the amount of the Consumer Price Index during the course of the project or add special fees. He explained the process that would be used to handle grey water studies and design. He explained the medium and high voltage requirements for electricity to be negotiated by Conway Corp. Mr. Gates went through the final points of the MOU with the Council, explaining the infrastructure improvement agreements that would come before them as the project move forward" ([[Project Stratus MOU and April 1 Special Council Meeting]]). - **April 1, 2025 14:14** — sent the [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence|"Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence" memo]] to [[Felicia Rogers]], who forwarded it to Council. The memo laid out the four-party MOU adoption sequence, the April 21 / April 22 PC and Council timeline, and the downstream ordinances the Council would need to enact. - **April 22, 2025** — addressed City Council on the annexation/rezone ordinances: "He told the Council that after the Planning Commission meeting, he had met with some of the residents of the area that were concerned about the development and felt that there had been a good conversation. He said that there would be many steps to the project, but that annexation is the first. He told the Council that if the property is not annexed, it offers no protection in the matter of public safety or development to the landowners or future owner of this property. He gave them a brief history of the CDC's participation in the development of the Lollie Road area, and how the parcels came to the present zoning and why the request is for I-3 zoning. He said by annexing and rezoning it would eliminate the A-1 island and create a contiguous I-3 development to site plan around which would create control over the entire development of the area" ([[Conway City Council Agendas and Minutes on Project Stratus]]). - Responded to opposition testimony from Alan Rice at the April 22 meeting. ## Notes Gates is identified across the corpus as "Jamie Gates" (signature) and "Mr. Gates" (council minutes); his exact title at the Chamber/CDC is not specified in produced documents but his role is substantive — he was the lead developer-side voice to Council on Project Stratus. The April 1 [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence|sequencing memo]] is Gates's clearest single contribution to the corpus: it shows that the Chamber/CDC had a fully-developed plan for the project's downstream regulatory sequencing before the Council adopted the MOU. The memo states "we wanted to lay out the next steps and planning horizon for the project. The first step, which begins tonight (April 1st), is agreeing to the deliverables and terms laid out in the MOU. … The next action item is adoption of the MOU by Conway Corporation at their Board of Directors meeting on April 15th. … We will schedule a board meeting of the Conway Foundation for later this month for their adoption and signature. Our intention is to go before the planning commission on 4/21 with a request for annexation and to expedite that commission vote to the council at your regular city council meeting on 4/22." Gates's authorship of this memo demonstrates the Chamber/CDC's organizational role as project coordinator across all four MOU-party adoption tracks. The .org email (`[email protected]`) is a Chamber/CDC domain; the City uses `.gov`. This is a useful distinction for parsing email threads in the corpus — `.org` participants are Chamber/CDC, `.gov` participants are City. The distinction also signals the institutional firewall between the developer-side coordinator and the city's regulatory custodians.