I knew we were in good shape, but I didn't think we'd be at the top.

We get a lot of concerns from businesses, visitors about perceptions of public safety about neighborhoods in downtown. We wanted to hold this to educate people about how complex this problem is and what initiatives are going on to help deal with street-civility issues.

We have growth pressure all over the city. I'm hoping that Nick will bring the pragmatism he has in general to kind of get things done.

Some of these prices are pretty hefty. Who are these people?

We don't have as much green space in our downtown as other cities do, so that means we have to make excellent use of what we've got.

It's quite thrilling to see where we're ranked because it shows the retail opportunities in the region. For downtown, we have to be very active to make sure we get our share of those opportunities.