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Huron council approves rezoning and incentive district for 41.88-acre ConAgra site
Summary
At a May 2025 Huron City Council meeting, members approved reclassifying 41.88 acres along River Road from industrial to single-family residential and adopted a tax-increment financing incentive district intended to fund seawall repairs and support redevelopment of the former ConAgra property.
At a May 2025 Huron City Council meeting, the council approved a request to rezone about 41.88 acres of city-owned property on the east side of River Road from I-2 General Industrial to R-1 Family Residential and adopted an ordinance establishing an incentive district tied to the same site.
The rezonings and incentive district are intended to clear zoning and financing obstacles for redevelopment of the former ConAgra site, city manager Michael Hamilton said. "This legislation is yet another step in bringing the ConAgra site back to tax-generating status," Hamilton said. He told the council the incentive district would provide revenue the city can use to repair the seawall, which he said is required for the project to proceed.
The ordinance establishing the incentive district (Ordinance No. 2025-10) declares improvements to the parcel a public purpose and requires owners within the district to make service payments in lieu of property taxes deposited into a municipal public improvement tax increment equivalent fund. Hamilton told council the district would allow the city to receive 73.5% of future real estate tax revenue from the parcel over 30 years; he also said compensation agreements with Huron City Schools (passed 2021) and EHOVE Career Center (passed 2022) allocate 25% and 1.5% respectively to those school partners.
During a public hearing earlier in the meeting, Hamilton said the rezoning request accompanied the sale of the property to Scribe Real Estate and would permit single-family homes on the site. He told council the property has not generated tax revenue for years and that redevelopment is the way to bring revenue back to the city and its school partners.
Council members discussed the practical trade-offs of incentives when recruiting developers. Mayor Monty Tapp and several council members said concessions are common in competitive economic development negotiations. Council also noted prior offers for the site had included higher assistance requests and were rejected as infeasible.
Council moved both to approve the rezoning request in the public hearing and to adopt the incentive-district ordinance as an emergency measure. Roll-call votes on the incentive ordinance and the rezoning motion were recorded in the meeting minutes and carried with affirmative votes by the council members present.
The rezoning will be reflected in an amendment to the official zoning map (Ordinance No. 2025-12), which staff said was placed on first reading at the same meeting. Planning staff told council the ConAgra concept plan had already been submitted for preliminary departmental review and would be scheduled for Planning Commission review on May 21, 2025.
Next steps identified by staff include completion of zoning map amendments, incorporation of departmental review comments into the planning packet, and further design and permitting work tied to seawall repairs and infrastructure for the redevelopment.
Action details, supporting documents and future public hearings are available through the city clerk's office and the planning department.
