From this article in The Pitch:
On the East Side, a historic building meets its demise, making way for a Family Dollar
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Speaking of places no one else wants to develop, let's turn our attention to the lonely, desolate moonscape that is the west Crossroads.
I kid, of course — the Crossroads, east or west, is a fantastic place. But it's a place where the value of buildings, the cost of development and the burden of real estate taxes have been the vectors of a renewed debate over incentives for developers.
Central to that discussion is Shirley Helzberg's decision to seek tax-increment financing for a building she bought 10 years ago, at 1640 Baltimore. TIF takes most of the future taxes that a redevelopment project would ordinarily generate and uses them to lessen the direct costs that a developer pays on a project.
In Helzberg's case, 38 percent of her $13 million project at 1640 Baltimore (which is meant to become a not-too-far-into-the-future headquarters for architecture firm BNIM) would come from TIF. The Baltimore proposal has sparked a new conversation about the priorities at City Hall and whether development incentives help or hurt other taxing jurisdictions, such as school districts, counties and library systems.
Helzberg used TIF to help build another of her Crossroads properties, the Vitagraph Building. She didn't use TIF to build a $5.9 million parking garage that serves the Webster House, another of the philanthropist's holdings in the neighborhood.
But she did this year appeal her tax bill on that garage.
Before it became a garage, the land at 17th and Wyandotte was home to the Orion Pictures Building, part of Kansas City's Film Row District. At that time, Jackson County valued the building at $879,667.
After Helzberg tore down the Orion Pictures Building and put in its place a new, 180-spot parking garage, in 2014, county assessors took another look and decided the property was worth $3.96 million. At that value, it generated $126,010 in property taxes in 2014, $62,715 of which went to Kansas City Public Schools.
Records with the Jackson County Board of Equalization show that in July, Helzberg's attorney submitted an appeal of the parking garage's tax value, saying the garage was worth $1.17 million, not $3.96 million.
Jerry Riffel, Helzberg's attorney, tells The Pitch that he believed the garage was "grossly overassessed" at nearly $4 million. He adds that the garage loses money "hand over fist."
The Board of Equalization, which hears tax appeals, compromised, knocking down the value of the Webster House garage to $2.26 million.
Of the BOE's decision, Riffel says, "I wasn't exhilarated, but I thought it was a fair compromise."
That took the tax value down to $74,186. As a result, KCPS was entitled to $35,843 in taxes off the Webster House garage when Helzberg paid her property tax bill on December 21 — $26,872 less than what it got the year before.
At least that's better than the $13,934 KCPS made in 2013, when the Orion Pictures Building still occupied the land.
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http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/on-the- ... id=6482923
