During Friday’s land bank board meeting, members heard from Nicholas Gunner, CEO of Orbitist LLC, about the services they provide to assist companies in tracking and compiling data online while at the same time producing videos to help tell their stories.

For close to seven years, Gunner has spent time building mapping applications. Gunner holds a background in digital storytelling, production and virtual reality. The company is located at the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator in Dunkirk.

In creating the company, Gunner said they wanted to mix storytelling and GIS technology to help organizations gather information and put it on the web for people to examine. Such technology is used by the Chautauqua County Visitors’ Bureau to show residents and tourists natural attractions and hiking areas in the region. The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is using Orbitist for a project to map plastics collected by people in the area.

“We have a turn-key mapping platform. Anybody can go to orbitist.com, sign up, become a member, and use our simple mapping tools,” Gunner said. “We’re multimedia producers. We tell stories with video. We have three freelance producers. We really think this is a big working component of our business.”

Orbitist has been working with the land bank to enhance their website to include an interface so people can browse through properties and see what’s for sale and what properties are slated for demolition. Gunner said they’re looking to roll the enhancement out so people have easy access to understand what the land bank’s doing. The company also conducted video work inside 28 University Park in Fredonia to allow developers the chance to see the inside without going into the moldy residence.

“Since the mold was so bad, we decided to market it via video tour of the property rather than risk people going in the moldy environment there,” said Gina Paradis, administrative director for the land bank. “That production will be done soon and uploaded to the website so developers can take a look at the property and prepare their proposals from that.”

The preliminary plan that Gunner proposed to board members included the production of three short stories to help communicate what the land bank is doing in the community to the outside world.

Gunner said they’d also like to profile a demolition and rehabilitation project to show the land bank’s impacts on the community.

“It’s about communicating to stakeholders to justify what you’re doing and pitching plans for the future,” Gunner said.

Paradis said using Orbitist is an opportunity to capitalize on available resources as data analytics is lacking within the department due to limitations.

“There’s boatloads of data that’s available from state and county resources. If we could get them in place and look at them, we have data sets that can help us tell our story in terms of how we’re impacting the community,” she said. “(It would) also help us make more strategic decisions on where we’re focusing our investments.”

In other news, the board approved the following property dispositions to buyers who put in offers: 431 Broadhead Ave. in Jamestown; 62 McDonough St. in Dunkirk; 123 W. Fifth St. in Dunkirk; 139 Newton Ave. in Jamestown; and 21 Christy St. in Silver Creek. Transactions of the sales haven’t been finalized as the names of the purchasers weren’t revealed.

Members entered into executive session to discuss the land bank’s executive director and board position openings. Mark Geise was the land bank’s executive director, but went on to become economic development manager for Monroe County. The board took no action after coming out of executive session.