Economic development and tax abatements

[langosta]

It is needed because property owners get incentives deals approved and then sit on the property for years -- often for speculative reasons -- hoping to find another developer to buy the property using the pre-approved incentives as a marketing feature.

3 years to approval to open is hard to meet when it takes 2.5 years to build the project. Financing takes 6-12 months BUT happens after you get the incentive.

Maybe a timeline is good but 3 years doesn't seem realistic.

[FangKC]

They added a provision to extend.

[Anthony_Hugo98]

KCUR out here telling folks how to be an “incentives watchdog”. There has to be some entity that has a vested interest in stifling development at this point, right? The all too well known tag line of “the schools have missed out on MILLIONS of dollars” tells me they’re trying to conflate all incentives as detrimental, without effectively communicating what each incentive does.

https://www.facebook.com/37398126318070 ... tid=cr9u03

[bspecht]

Unlikely. It's good to have people informed, and ideally they're able to use a contextual critical lens on the information (not as common).

Same author just wrote an article about the City not offering recycling services to multifamily buildings ft @staubio: https://kcbeacon.org/stories/2023/05/18 ... ling-bins/

[KC_Ari]

I don't like the framing of it as 'Lost Revenue' instead of not gaining as much revenue as if there was no incentive. But then you have to ask if the project(s) would even happen without them which is a whole other thing.

[Cratedigger]

I like how the Biz Journal has started including post incentive revenue breakdowns like this:

The incentives are valued around $2 million. Affected taxing jurisdictions such as Kansas City Public Schools, which did not oppose MCM's public financing request, are expected to receive $700,000 over 10 years and $4.7 million over 25 years, according to agency documents. The developer said the incentives will help offset costs from refurbishing the long-vacant building, the top two floors of which suffered significant fire damage years ago.

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascit ... ion.html