DRAFT 171ST STUDY 04-27-2009 - Laserfiche WebLink

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East Elk River Gateway The city-owned Gateway land is green field land offers the greatest opportunity for early development in the FAST. Significant investment will be need for utilities and roadway infrastructure. Adevelopment goal will be to creating enough development intensity required to generate financial resources to assist in achieving the vision here in other parts of the FAST. Other districts will involve challenging but necessary acquisition and demolition, as well as infrastructure and amenity investments. The East Elk River Gateway District development will establish the future development pattern and character for the i7ist Avenue FAST. The Hinge District The Hinge District is the likely location for commercial and retail uses to development in the immediate future. Establishing an internal roadway network through the will facilitate the proper traffic circulation between extended Twin Lakes Parkway and i7ist Avenue. The design of development will set the tone for the future and will include streetscape, trails and wetland mitigation. FINANCING A detailed financial analysis was not performed as part of the planning process. There area many financial variables involved with complex development planning projects. The following information highlights the key tools currently available to finance implementation of the master plan. Tax Increment Financing The costs of development and redevelopment may be too great to allow new projects to be financially feasible. The situation poses the classic "but for" situation in State law governing tax increment financing. "But for" the use of TIF, the development as proposed would not occur. It is clear that the desired redevelopment will not take place without the removal of physical and economic barriers by the City. Tax increment financing is the only tool with the capacity to accomplish these objectives. As with other elements of the master plan, projections for the use of TIF are both comprehensive and conservative. The plan seeks to provide a clear understanding of what might be required with the goal of reducing public financial commitments as the plan is implemented. The result can be found in other large redevelopment settings. As redevelopment begins to transform an area, market forces improve. As the potential income from rents and sales grow, private development can carry more costs of redevelopment. This master plan assumes that all of the redevelopment projects will be included in TIF districts. In simplest terms, TIF allows the City to capture the property taxes from redevelopment and use these monies to pay for the investments required to undertake the development. Financial analysis conducted through the planning process clearly shows that private development will not alone support the investments required for IMPLEMENTATION