Pay attention. I’m going to run through this fast.
The city of Charlotte is doing another one of those special deals where property tax revenue is diverted from the general fund in order to pay for things the city really, really likes. In this case, it is a new road into Rick and Noah Lazes’ the Uptown Village development:
The road extension is the key to develop the area, said Tom Warshauer, the city’s economic development manager.
“It’s a road we all acknowledge we want to see built,” Warshauer said. “We want momentum for new development throughout uptown, and we’d like to see the benefits of uptown captured by all the areas surrounding it.”
Under the financing plan, the city would pay $1.7 million of the $2.5 million cost of the road extensions, and the Ark Group would pay the balance. Over the next 10 years, 90 percent of the property-tax revenue from the housing and film-studio portions of the Village would go to repay the Ark Group for its investment, provided it reserves 20 percent of its planned 600 residential units for work force housing and 50 percent for families.
The city badly wants to ensure sufficient affordable work force housing as uptown develops, Warshauer said. “There are not a whole lot of downsides to the project,” he said.
No, not unless you count the higher tax rates for people not named Lazes in order to make up for the lost revenue.
Carry on.
