Administration and property owner walk council through CRA vs. TIF trade-offs for downtown project at 527 West Lake
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Summary
Consultant Jason Dodson and property owner Danny Little presented an analysis to Finance & Personnel on the costs and benefits of using a Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) abatement versus modifying the downtown Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district for a proposed downtown investment. The analysis quantified net present-value costs to the city of
Council’s Finance & Personnel Committee heard a detailed presentation Oct. 27 about downtown development incentives and a specific proposal for 527 West Lake.
Consultant Jason Dodson described the 2019 action that placed roughly 600 downtown parcels into a TIF district and explained that Summit County had not applied the TIF coding for many of the parcels until recently; county coding is now being updated and the TIF revenue stream is expected to begin flowing to the city for infrastructure purposes after reconciliation. Dodson explained that when a property located inside a TIF is pulled out and instead provided a CRA (a property tax abatement applied to the building), the city foregoes a stream of property tax increment that otherwise would have been captured for downtown infrastructure.
Using a hypothetical $500,000 investment example and a 15‑year, 100% CRA model (net‑present‑value discounted at 4%), Dodson showed the city’s foregone property tax revenue on the order of $8,064 (net present value of the city share) for a property that was not inside the TIF. For a parcel already inside the downtown TIF, he reported a larger city cost of approximately $38,035 NPV if that parcel is pulled out of the existing TIF and given a CRA because the downtown TIF currently captures other taxing-district shares that would otherwise flow to other local subdivisions but have been assigned to downtown infrastructure.
Dodson also included projected annual income‑tax gains tied to new jobs (an example $9,000 per year in new municipal income tax in his model) and framed the $38,035 cost as an investment to incentivize private investment, job growth and ongoing downtown spending; the property owner, Danny Little, described prior investments and said additional private investment would follow.
Committee members asked questions about reconciliation with Summit County, the timing of TIF coding, and whether the economic benefit justified the cost. The administration said county coding work is underway and that some reconciliation of past years will occur when the county finalizes TIF entries. Committee did not take a final vote on a specific incentive for 527 West Lake at the meeting; staff said analyses like this will recur when downtown projects are proposed.