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Committee advances SF Jazz New Markets tax‑credit indemnity with condition to refine community benefits
Summary
The committee agreed to send a resolution authorizing a city indemnity for $15 million in New Markets Tax Credit investment for the SF Jazz Center to the Board without recommendation, while pressing sponsors to strengthen the community benefits agreement to tie benefits to the Fillmore neighborhood.
The Budget and Finance Committee moved to forward, without recommendation, a resolution approving a New Markets Tax Credit indemnification agreement tied to $15,000,000 in tax‑credit allocation for the proposed SF Jazz Center at Franklin and Fell.
Amy Brown (acting city administrator) and Stephen Maduli Williams (Redevelopment Agency / San Francisco Community Investment Fund) explained that the San Francisco Community Investment Fund (SIF) received a $35 million allocation in tax credits and proposed deploying $15 million to the SF Jazz Center. Because the Redevelopment Agency is temporarily precluded from entering new obligations, the city was asked to provide a limited indemnity to U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, the investor, to protect against recapture by the IRS during the seven‑year compliance period.
Maduli Williams described the project as a roughly $55 million nonprofit initiative that would create construction and permanent jobs and provide community benefits including local hire commitments (minimum 50% local hires for construction positions and 55% San Francisco residents for many permanent positions), eight free family matinees annually targeted to the Fillmore, expanded Discover Jazz education to six schools (two Title I), low‑cost and youth performances, 25 youth internships per year and 80 hours of free community space annually. He said the indemnity’s recapture triggers are narrowly defined and that staff negotiated caps (including $5 million caps on some exposures) and long cure periods.
Supervisor Mercarini pressed staff and the SF Jazz representatives to strengthen and more tightly memorialize commitments to Western Addition/Fillmore residents, arguing the draft community benefits agreement (CBA) is too general and insufficiently tied to the neighborhood. Felice Swapp (SF Jazz COO) described outreach already completed and said SF Jazz is willing to incorporate stronger language into the CBA. The committee approved sending the indemnity item to the Board without recommendation pending a budget analyst report and asked staff to continue working with supervisors to strengthen neighborhood linkages.
