When the city pursues a new project or business, it can use a range of taxpayer-financed incentives to help sweeten a deal or close a financial gap.
There’s money for added jobs. Money for infrastructure improvements. Money for locating in areas not as desirable as others.
The urban core has its own range of incentives after the Downtown Investment Authority last year incorporated them into its business plan.
They aren’t as widely known, but they’re on track this month to be codified under a sweeping update of the city’s overall incentives policy.
Downtown’s options are a bit different. There are established programs that help improve retail facades or assist in historic building renovations.
But there’s also a keen focus on an aspect not found anywhere else: A concerted effort to boost Downtown’s residential numbers.
There’s a down-payment assistance program, one that offers up to $20,000 for people purchasing a primary residence if they make under $66,000 annually.
For renters, one program would supply a monthly $200 subsidy toward housing with up to $100 more if the person works Downtown and rents a unit within a defined strategic housing area.
On the developer side, Recaptured Enhanced Value grants — a common perk outside the urban core — offer property tax breaks for multifamily and affordable housing developments Downtown.
“It’s about trying to build critical mass in Downtown,” said Aundra Wallace, DIA CEO.
He brought the rental and down-payment assistance ideas with him from a previous stop as head of the Detroit Land Bank Authority. The programs were wildly successful there, he said, and brought millennials and others into the urban core to the point where land values and the tax base significantly improved.
Jacksonville’s Downtown, he said, is no different today than Detroit was prior to its boom.
Just because the programs are now in place, though, doesn’t mean they have been utilized. The first voucher or check hasn’t been cut for a familiar reason — there is no funding.
The down-payment assistance program has a $1.5 million initial recommendation, enough to provide incentive for 100 people at an average of $15,000. The rental program doesn’t have such estimates.
Don’t expect them to be funded in this year’s budget, either.
Pension obligations and extending a half-cent sales tax dominate the efforts of Mayor Lenny Curry and others.
A ballot initiative in August is the next step in solving the $2.8 billion problem. By the time any relief comes, it should be far too late to help the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
“I’m very attuned to where we are as a city,” said Wallace.
He was one step away this spring from starting one of the programs, though.
The Legislature approved a $1 million urban homesteading program — a formalized name for the down-payment assistance plan — that didn’t make it past Gov. Rick Scott’s veto pen.
If Scott had signed it, Wallace would have sought a matching $1 million from somewhere in the city to provide a healthy start for the idea.
The money, he said, could also have gone toward converting Downtown apartments like the Carling and 11E into condominiums, a way to help city finances while creating more permanent residents.
Wallace said the DIA will make the pitch again next year with hopes of a better outcome.
DIA board members also see the value of having the incentives programs in place, even if they aren’t all funded.
“Some tools are far more effective than others,” said Jim Bailey, DIA chair, “and the economy can change quickly.”
Having all the options available provides flexibility to remain competitive for both commercial and residential projects, said Bailey, who is publisher of the Daily Record.
Board member Oliver Barakat agrees. Commercial incentives might help offset business expansion costs like parking, while residential perks can better benefit the end user — the renters and homeowners Downtown needs.
“A lot of the workforce in Downtown can only afford so much,” he said of the residential programs.
So like big businesses looking at Jacksonville as their place of business, people wanting to call Downtown home might one day have a little incentive to do so.
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