urbanSTL

Behind paywall but Stl Today reporting that Mayor Jones pushing back on Foundry development.   Hate to think that St Louis will be caught between two extremes, Gov Parsons and Mayor Jones.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... the-latest

dredger wrote: ↑

May 19, 2021

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... the-latest

""ST. LOUIS — In another sign that new leadership at City Hall is pushing back on subsidies, a city commission that vets development incentives on Wednesday again delayed a public hearing on the next phase of the City Foundry project amid ongoing negotiations with Mayor Tishaura Jones’ administration.

It’s the latest indication that a shift in the city’s political power structure following the April election is reverberating through the development community.

Wednesday morning’s St. Louis Tax Increment Financing Commission meeting was the second time the board punted on a public hearing for the high-profile Midtown development, which is seeking an amendment to a development incentive agreement approved years ago. The commission already pushed back a hearing scheduled for April 28, shortly after Jones and the ward’s new alderman, Tina Pihl, were sworn in.

“Why are we continuing this?,” TIF Commission vice chair Phillip Klevorn asked city staff Wednesday morning after the commission indicated it would continue the meeting until June 2. “Last month, I was asked to block out two hours of my schedule and I get here and it lasts 10 minutes. It’s happening again. This is not an efficient use of time. So what’s the game plan and the end game here?”

Dale Ruthsatz, director of commercial development with the St. Louis Development Corporation, said staff didn’t know until the “eleventh hour that we needed to make this change.”

“There’s a lot of new individuals as part of the whole process, including a new alderman and a new mayor,” Ruthsatz said. “I think it’s just taking a little bit to get everything together and organized.”

A spokesman for the SLDC confirmed that it was still in “discussions” on the TIF. 

Nick Dunne, a spokesman for Jones, said in a text that the mayor’s office was “keeping its promise to be a more active partner in negotiations around development incentives,” including at City Foundry.

Earlier this month, Jones vetoed two bills authorizing property tax abatements, another development incentive, in the central corridor, arguing they were too generous for that part of the city. She urged those developers to “come back to the table” to negotiate.

In addition to the mayor, City Foundry developer Steve Smith also has a new alderman to work with. Under St. Louis’s system, aldermanic support where a project is proposed is essential to winning zoning, incentives and other development legislation. Pihl was one of four new aldermen from the progressive wing of the Democratic party who won election last month, shifting the balance of power on the 28-member board toward a bloc more critical of development incentives. 

Pihl succeeded longtime alderman Joe Roddy, who shepherded countless development incentive bills through the board during his 30-plus years representing a ward that in recent years has seen among the most redevelopment activity in the city. 

SLDC Director Otis Williams said the continuation of the April 28 hearing was a “joint decision between SLDC and the alderman.” Pihl said Wednesday she was still “looking at this project” and “looking at the numbers.” She’s still getting up to speed on the project as well as countless other issues as a new alderman, she added.

Smith, the developer, declined to comment.

Smith has spent the last five years working to rehab the old Federal Mogul industrial site at Forest Park and Vandeventer avenues into an entertainment and office complex anchored by a food hall. Its opening was delayed by the pandemic, but it has recently begun hosting concerts and plans a full opening later this year.

Back in 2017, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved a TIF incentive package worth up $36 million, with about $19 million of that allocated to a nearly-complete first phase initially valued at some $130 million. About $17 million in TIF, which allows developers to use the new sales and property taxes their projects generate for construction costs, was allocated for a second phase.

The request before the TIF Commission does not seek more than the $17 million TIF already approved for the second phase. However, the TIF still needs commission review and passage by the Board of Aldermen because the City Foundry plans now call for a 282-unit apartment building rather than a 100,000-square-foot office building originally planned for the second phase.

It wasn’t clear what was still being negotiated. 

“Investors invest where the municipalities are receptive and where they can get a fair return on investment,” Williams, the SLDC director said during the Wednesday meeting. “I think where we are is trying to balance that. If you were about to buy something, would you buy from someone who is antagonistic?”

TIF Commissioner Christina Bennett suggested during the meeting that the project could be “subsidizing one of our major universities.”

“That is absolutely not true,” Williams retorted. 

In an interview, Bennett clarified that she suspected many of apartment building’s renters would be students at nearby St. Louis University. SLU in 2019 purchased the site where the City Foundry apartment building is planned, and Smith has worked with the university on past projects. 

A spokesman for SLU said the university doesn’t plan to hold onto the property and doesn’t manage off-campus apartments.

A spokeswoman for Smith’s development firm, New + Found, said the “apartment complex is designed for young professionals seeking an active lifestyle. Though it is not student housing, we would welcome members of the St. Louis University and Washington University communities into ours.”"

Is anything e.g. fresh thyme ever going to OPEN at this project?

chris fuller wrote:Is anything e.g. fresh thyme ever going to OPEN at this project?

Ye of little patience. Fresh Thyme is to open this Fall. I toured today, an announcement on the opening of the Food Hall will be made soon along with some retail tenants.

chris fuller wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

Is anything e.g. fresh thyme ever going to OPEN at this project?

From the looks of their social media, Deli Star should be opening soon.

Just don't ask what that is because I'm still not quite sure. I know it involves a kitchen, a chef, and possibly students...

There’s no way this deal doesn’t get done. I’d rather have them do it this way and negotiate now so Jones doesn’t veto the deal later.

chriss752 wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

chris fuller wrote:Is anything e.g. fresh thyme ever going to OPEN at this project?

Ye of little patience.

...an announcement on the opening of the Food Hall will be made soon along with some retail tenants.

Lol. Not saying it won't happen this time around, but...they've been saying that, literally word for word, since Summer of 2019.

urbanitas wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

chriss752 wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

chris fuller wrote:Is anything e.g. fresh thyme ever going to OPEN at this project?

Ye of little patience.

...an announcement on the opening of the Food Hall will be made soon along with some retail tenants.

Lol. Not saying it won't happen this time around, but...they've been saying that, literally word for word, since Summer of 2019.

They're at the point now where they're ready to. I was told things during my tour today that makes it much clearer than hints of the past. March 2020 - March 2021 was really full of unknowns thanks to the Coronavirus. Now that we're getting out of it, it's time to start having announcements. There will be retail tenants, I was told what one tenant would be, and there will be more Food Hall tenants announced as well as openings and what not. They're there. I agree that this has taken a long time, but I feel like it'll be wroth the wait. 

They had to curate things to get it right and had to work with a tough City retail market. They embarked on a challenge and have been successful so far even if it has been slow.

imran wrote:Gosh Chris. I don’t often see you get angry in your posts.

Her stance, I feel , is that we need to take care of basic needs like crime and schools rather than throw tax dollars towards developers who are obsessed with luxury developments (thats where the $$ is ofcourse)

Sometimes you have to go through some pain to heal. She is trying to change the conversation.

Be patient. In the long run the City will be stronger because of it.

Her stance could work out in the long run but for now, it’s sending a message to developers that “you’re not welcome here without going through me first”. This apparent message is negative in the short term and that negative message can have implications in the long run. That message is one I am not good with at this point.

And my trend towards angrier and angrier posts has been happening more and more recently, which is why I decided to want to take a break from this and other social media, collect myself, and then return. But I felt that I had to respond to the Centene mess and then comment on the Foundry to let it rip and then disappear back into the shadows for a few weeks as I intended. When I return I hope to be more positive, but if I don’t feel that I will be positive about things and go along with what members of the Board think, I’ll remain off this forum and active on my own social media channels (Twitter and my Facebook Group). I like this Forum, I really do and I don’t like adding negativity but yet here I am.

I’m out.

chriss752 wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

urbanitas wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

chriss752 wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

Ye of little patience.

...an announcement on the opening of the Food Hall will be made soon along with some retail tenants.

Lol. Not saying it won't happen this time around, but...they've been saying that, literally word for word, since Summer of 2019.

They're at the point now where they're ready to. I was told things during my tour today that makes it much clearer than hints of the past. March 2020 - March 2021 was really full of unknowns thanks to the Coronavirus. Now that we're getting out of it, it's time to start having announcements. There will be retail tenants, I was told what one tenant would be, and there will be more Food Hall tenants announced as well as openings and what not. They're there. I agree that this has taken a long time, but I feel like it'll be wroth the wait. 

They had to curate things to get it right and had to work with a tough City retail market. They embarked on a challenge and have been successful so far even if it has been slow.

Fair enough. The eatertainment anchor tenants are certainly understandable, since two of them went bankrupt, have had a change in ownership, and closed a bunch of their locations...

But not getting that Food Hall open earlier in some capacity was a huge missed opportunity.  It's a venue almost perfectly suited for social distancing, with 30'+ ceilings, wide aisles, and plenty of wide-open spaces with seating to spread out. Plus, they had a large, ready-made outdoor "street" dining area if they needed it, where they could have set up tents or plastic igloos.  The Food Hall could have been the only game in town for awhile. Meaning, it would have been one of the few "diverse dining experience" options - or whatever you want to call it - late last summer and into fall, able to operate at something close to full capacity.

And then of course there's the Fresh Thyme. A grocery store, that does pickup and delivery, in a city with few grocery options, in a pandemic...

This board really needs the energy and optimism the younger contributors bring. 

I get the incentive overload in the central corridor, especially compared to deep north and south nabes that have gotten far less.  I've internally railed against it, especially when it's weird mini town developments like this one, Iron Hill, etc.  The other is that there are a TON of connective pieces missing all over the City.  If we're not going to connect the dots with subsidized development, the City needs to get off its planning arse and start working on infrastructure, multimodal, road diets, protected bike lanes, new sidewalks, etc. in the central corridor.  Not that having one really precludes the other.  But positive development certainly does take the sting off of lazy crap like crumbling sidewalks, inability to criminalize speeding and drag racing, general urban density lifestyles.

framer wrote: ↑

May 20, 2021

This board really needs the energy and optimism the younger contributors bring. 

Amen to that.

I can see pushing back on heavy incentives for a project like Iron Hill that's taking a strong corner, close to shovel-ready that's conducive to various types of development. But the Foundry project is exactly the type of development that should get tax incentives.

That site was never going to produce tax dollars unless there was some incentive to develop a burned out warehouse with significant environmental issues. If I was Steve Smith and I've been working through this development for years, actually making visible progress and still keep running into pointless delays and mixed messages from the city, I would probably be at a tipping point.  There are so many different elements to coordinating a project of that magnitude that take substantial time and money, it would be maddeningly frustrating to have it repeatedly held up by a board that has zero urgency, zero concept of how these types of investments work and a pretty awful history of creating a cohesive urban environment. Why spend your time working on creative re-use of otherwise blighted properties in a declining city when said city is publicly trying to become a hurdle to score political points? Much easier to toss up a cookie cutter apartment building in the suburbs and make a healthy ROI. 

I echo what Chris said above - if Tishaura wants her legacy to be sticking her nose in every development deal within the central corridor and squeezing even the worthwhile projects to get headlines, it's going to result in a large amount of investment $$ drying up.  100% agree that the tax abatement trend got out of control and needed to be reigned in, but more strategically than exclusively based on how close to highway 40 the project is.  Regionally, we can look at the central corridor and think "there's tons of demand in that area and developers should be lining up to do projects without incentives" but when you compare STL to pretty much any other peer city, it's kind of depressing to see how far we're lagging behind.

Tax incentives are a fiscal policy tool and should therefore be subject to cost-benefit analysis, which I think is not done nearly enough or at least not in a way that is not distorted by interests. 
Would the project go ahead without tax incentives? Then don't give them out.
Would the project not go ahead without tax incentives? Then give them out.
Obviously not all projects are black or red in terms of their NPV, and things become extremely complicated when said interests come into play (both developers and city have incentives to bluff in opposite ways). But I don't think that adopting blanket policies (incentives for everyone or no incentives for anyone) is helpful in any way. 

You'd like to think that she understands that there is more political equity in high profile deals going through some modification so she can tout how she saved money but the development is still moving forward. Going in with a flamethrower and killing the deal doesn't give her much to brag about unless her voters like seeing developers handcuffed to the point where they just fold up shop.

jbacott wrote:You'd like to think that she understands that there is more political equity in high profile deals going through some modification so she can tout how she saved money but the development is still moving forward. Going in with a flamethrower and killing the deal doesn't give her much to brag about unless her voters like seeing developers handcuffed to the point where they just fold up shop.

Totally agree here. Coming in and just scorching the earth is Trumpian. Working with people and saying look we got this incentive down this much or that much is progress and still shows a willingness to work. In the end we just want a better deal not a 140 characters or less on Twitter leadership. Alas we might be beyond hyperbolic personalities in politics for a while.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Let's allow Mayor Jones to create a track record for herself and her policies before we become chicken littles or march down to city hall with pitchforks and lit torches.

This is what we know so far: She has asked two developers to come back to the table, and we still really aren't clear on what is happening at City Foundry Phase II. Right now, everything I've read concerning it is vague or speculative. 

It's far too early in her mayorship to know how she is going to handle incentives. 

Clearly, this could go either way, but she isn't saying the wrong things to the public. She wants to be a "better partner" and she wants these developers to have a conversation with her. "Scorched earth," to me, means a blanket "no" with no conversation after. That is so clearly not what is happening here. 

I didn't vote for Tishaura Jones, but I'm going to give her a fair shake before I start allowing myself to shake with anger or fear. She wants a healthier and better future for our most deliberately downtrodden neighborhoods and communities, and who among us with a heart can argue against that?