From the Indianapolis Star:
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Midtown leaders and neighborhood groups are asking the city to help the area help itself. At the center of their plan is a tax-increment financing proposal (TIF) that would allow the area to use property tax growth from new developments to invest in the area. TIFs have become quite controversial at the City-County Building of late, but it's important to consider a few things:
First, the TIF captures only new property tax revenue -- meaning money from new investment over and above what is already collected. Second, the money would be used to do things like improve parks and infrastructure and recruit private investment. Third, in this case it includes only the taxes collected at a few commercial nodes, not residential areas. Fourth, if areas improve and residential home values rise, the whole city benefits.
"Our idea is to try to reverse the problems neighborhoods are seeing before it's too late, and before everything has bottomed out," said Chuck Cagann, a Midtown leader.
The backers point to 38th and Illinois as a perfect example of the need for the TIF. The area has a stretch of attractive businesses but in recent years has been targeted by the kind of businesses that do little to encourage strong neighborhoods: all-night gas stations and fast-food joints, for instance. Crime is an increasing problem.
There's been no real investment in the area in decades, Cagann said, "and the market right now isn't going to make an investment there because of the things that are going on."
With a TIF, an unfunded plan to redevelop Tarkington Park, he said, could serve as an anchor to the area. Investments could be targeted toward efforts to make the area more walkable. Businesses that make the area stronger could be recruited with modest incentives. Over time, one of those wonderful neighborhood centers could emerge. The goal on one end is to stabilize still-strong areas, encouraging residents to stay put, while revitalizing other areas, attracting new and younger residents.
The effort would go hand-in-hand with initiatives to improve the quality of schools and mass transit in the city. The TIF is just one piece of the Midtown effort; it isn't a panacea, but rather a tool to help the area tackle its problems.
"People we have talked to have said this is what a TIF is for," Cagann said of the plan, which Barth recently introduced as an ordinance.
The beauty of the proposal is that it has been developed at the neighborhood level by people who want to avoid the type of decline so common in American cities, and who see the potential in this one. It doesn't cost the city money; in fact, it would likely spur new development and raise general tax collections.
Along the way, it could help Indianapolis build more of the bustling neighborhoods that are what so many people, from parents to recent college grads to retirees, love about cities.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012209260327
