1986-10-28 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I ~ " l- t y ','t- I I i .. ~ !. Council Meeting Minutes October 28, 1986 Council Business, continued Brandt indicated a desire to encourage developers to come to New Brighton and feels the city should facilitate that in any way it can, believing the city needs to provide assistance if it wants to go forward. Brandt questioned the level of assistance required for this project, asking if the $225 per month fee, which was eliminated this evening, was not accepted by the developer as adequate city assistance for the project. Locke explained the original concept was for $520,000 plus $220 and that had been reworked to the $470,000 plus $225, but those dollars had not yet been fine tuned. Benke stated that was the city's position but was not accepted by the developer in total; and Locke confirmed. Gunderman inquired about the difference in the actual value; Locke responded the project was submitted to the Ramsey County Assessor's Department and they evaluated and established the value at $2,756,100, rather than $3 million, and feels their evaluation has a very high degree of certainty of being correct. Schmidt stated, in terms of whether it is the developer's perspec- tive or the public's perspective on whether this should be an economic project versus a redevelopment project, whenever the city is providing some level of assistance or subsidy to make a project feasible that always has to be balanced with how much is being asked for and whether or not it is going to be feasible within the time period that we are able to collect the tax incre- ments paid back for whatever level of assistance the .city has provided for the project; and that that needs to be further balanced against the risk and the security. To Schmidt, this project has far less risk to the city, greater flexiblity by being structured as a redevelopment project, and provides real benefits to the city versus the aesthetics and quality of an office building that might be there as an economic development project but, in terms of real benefit by generating any kind of tax increments that might be available for the rest of the city, it is really only there as a redevelopment project and that is the project he would support. Benke stated the choice would be a three-story office building in a redevelopment district or a two-story in an economic district and is comfortable with the distinction between the two. Gunderman asked how it would work financially regarding the cost factors if the $50,000 Letter of Credit were changed to a larger amount. Page Seven