Hugo Downtown Development Initiatives Endorsed
TIF Public Hearing, Design Guidelines OKd
Two key downtown development initiatives - one setting a public hearing on a new tax incremental financing district and the other establishing certain downtown design guidelines - have been endorsed by the Hugo City Council.
The TIF public hearing will be held March 19 at City Hall, the council decided January 16 on a unanimous voice vote.
Prior to the council vote, Community Development Director Bryan Bear explained that City Hall staff and the Hugo Economic Development Authority had "completed all of the (preliminary) steps" necessary to set up a downtown TIF district.
Under tax incremental financing, municipalities provide infrastructure improvements in designated areas to attract development, capturing increases in tax revenues to offset those expenses over a specifi ed time frame.
City staff will prepare a formal TIF plan to be reviewed about a month before the public hearing by the Economic Development Authority and the City Council, ideally at a joint meeting, Bear said.
On another unanimous voice vote, the council scheduled the joint meeting for 9:30 a.m. February 20 at City Hall.
After Bear's presentation, Council Member Becky Petryk asked whether the TIF district plan would allow any residential development downtown or whether the TIF would instead be commercial-only.
Bear replied that the plan would "accommodate, really, any kind of development" under a formula that would assign scores to various types of proposals.
However, the formula will tend to put "emphasis on the kind of development you'd expect in a downtown," with commercial and mixed-use projects likely to yield higher scores, Bear said.
Following the TIF discussion, Bear also outlined newly- revised design guidelines for a portion of the downtown area at the southwest corner of the intersection of County Road 8 and Highway 61.
The guidelines, which are recommended design parameters if the property - now privately owned - becomes available for new development, originally had envisioned considerable townhouse construction in the designated area, Bear noted.
However, in the wake of a council consensus last year that Hugo might have reached its new-townhouse-development saturation point, the Economic Development Authority changed the guidelines to favor office and commercial uses only, Bear added.
Commented Council Member Mike Granger, who sparked the council's "no more townhouses" sentiments: "Again, these are only guidelines. What comes will depend on what the developers bring us. We really just want quality, whether it's office or retail. . These [guidelines] are just ideas."
Petryk also emphasized that the guidelines should not be misinterpreted by property owners in the target area as a sign that City Hall is after their real estate. The guidelines will only apply if the property eventually becomes available, she noted.
"This is not a matter of the council considering condemnation or anything like that," Petryk said.
Approved by the council on another unanimous voice vote, the guidelines will now be inserted into a general downtown development plan that must be given a final endorsement by both the Hugo Planning Commission and the council, Bear explained.
In response to Petryk's question about how a current housing "hiccup" might affect the city's ability to attract commercial development downtown, Bear noted that commercial and residential real estate markets are marked by different supply-and-demand pictures.
"There are still businesses that are very interested in locating in the city of Hugo," Bear said.