Larry Riley in the Muncie Star-Press:
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The MRC took the 16-acre Spartech TIF district on east Memorial near Macedonia behind the old Ball Glass tower, and expanded it to 1,000 acres and renamed the district the South Muncie Economic Development Project Area.
From Spartech, the district follows the old Ball railroad line south and west, consuming anything that appears industrial (or once was). West of Walnut, the width expands to take in everything between 18th and 23rd streets over to Cowan Road.
A quarter mile past past Cowan Road, the district squeezes into a narrow line to cross a corn field (the whole TIF has to be connected), then expands to take in everything between Cornbread Road and Memorial east of Tillotson.
A new $12 million assisted living facility is expected at Memorial and Tillotson.
East of Spartech, I’ll spare you the gory details and just describe the overview: a thin line runs out to snag the Indiana-American Water plant on Burlington. Before that extension, the district rolls northward up to the old Broderick plant, King forge, all of the former Indiana Steel & Wire site (MRC executive director Todd Donati hinted of a new manufacturer interested in the locale), then east along the railroad tracks through the center of town to envelop the old Chevy transmission plant on Eighth Street.
The audacious plan is an old-fashioned land grab and preemptive strike to cherry-pick the few known planned developments.
They ran the TIF all the way to Burlington because, commission members heard, Indiana-American Water will be investing $26 million in improvements to the water treatment plant.
If, say, those improvements netted $15 million in assessed value, the MRC just skimmed off all $450,000 of annual property taxes that otherwise would have been divided up by local government units.
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See the full article here:
http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2014301120021&nclick_check=1
