A new funding proposal for redeveloping the Downtown Laura Street Trio into a hotel, restaurant and apartments will be the subject of two hearings in January before the full City Council.
At the Dec. 12 Council meeting, Council President Ron Salem said he was planning hearings on the funding package before the Committee of the Whole – the entire 19-member Council – on Jan. 4 and Jan. 8. Times of those hearings will be announced later.
The Trio legislation, Ordinance 2023-876, offers $36.5 million in public incentives and would authorize the city to provide a $22 million loan guarantee for the developer, SouthEast Development Group, to obtain a construction loan it has negotiated with private lender Capital One.
It also includes a $2 million forgivable loan from an earlier agreement, for a total public investment of about $60.5 million.
Council member Matt Carlucci, the ordinance’s lead sponsor, said the $22 million loan guarantee was designed to be used if SouthEast failed to make its principal and interest payments on the construction loan over its first two years.
Carlucci said that although the city would face risk in the loan, he believed the investment was worth making to preserve the historic Trio buildings at Laura and Forsyth streets, built between 1902 and 1912, and help spur Downtown redevelopment.
The ordinance defines the financial arrangement as a city participation loan. In participation loans, multiple lenders provide funding for a single borrower.
In an interview after the Council meeting, Salem said the size and complexity of the legislation warranted discussions before the full Council as opposed to the regular committee process.
“I think it’s too big, and I just think it would be better if we all met together as a whole and heard it all together,” he said.
SouthEast is pursuing plans to redevelop the Trio into a $171.5 million eight-floor, four-star Marriott Autograph Collection hotel, a restaurant and bar open to hotel patrons and the public, and 149 apartments with market-rate and workforce housing units.
Plans include renovating the three existing buildings and construction of two new 11-story structures.