Tampa City Council Member Bill Carlson and Rays CEO Ken Babby put a new Tampa-side stadium financing proposal into public view today, setting up another round of discussions with a City Council where Carlson needs four votes and several terms remain unfinished. <\/p>\n
The structure Carlson described on Garrett Greco\u2019s Tampa Bay Developer podcast would change the treatment of Tampa\u2019s proposed $80 million participation, create a separate tax increment financing district around the roughly 130-acre Rays development and redirect redevelopment tax revenue elsewhere in Tampa. Final tax-allocation percentages, development requirements and a repayment schedule have not been disclosed, and Carlson has not committed to supporting the definitive agreement himself.<\/p>\n
TBBW<\/a> spoke with council members Lynn Hurtak, Alan Clendenin and Luis Viera after the podcast. Hurtak continues to question the city\u2019s financial participation, while Clendenin supported the project under the May framework and remains prepared to vote for it under Carlson\u2019s alternative. Viera welcomed the movement in negotiations, said council needs to pass a positive plan and pointed to Carlson\u2019s Downtown Community Redevelopment Area proposal as an idea he found encouraging.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat would the source of that money be? That\u2019s what I want to know,\u201d Hurtak told TBBW. \u201cI don\u2019t have $20 million. I can\u2019t find $20 million. That\u2019s the big crux of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor the investment the city was looking at in the original MOU, it was still a great deal for the city of Tampa,\u201d Clendenin told TBBW. Carlson\u2019s proposal, he said, is \u201ca different type of vehicle. It\u2019s a different type of mechanism. It\u2019s a different type of reimbursable agreement. But in the end it reaches the same goal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhether it\u2019s a slight upgrade, and we are turning an Outback into a Longhorn Steakhouse, or something radically different, we should all be encouraged by the movement,\u201d Viera told TBBW. \u201cWe need to get a positive plan passed. I am encouraged by talks of innovative incentive ideas like a cap on the downtown CRA.\u201d<\/p>\n The May memorandum of understanding contemplated as much as $80 million of Tampa Community Investment Tax revenue for public improvements serving the $2.3 billion ballpark project on Hillsborough College\u2019s Dale Mabry campus. The MOU did not require that money to be repaid.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve asked for annual payments of $20 million,\u201d Carlson said on the podcast. \u201cThat would be an advance on the tax revenue-sharing stream, the property-tax stream. And so through the city we\u2019ll do that, we\u2019ll do PayGo. And then they will pay us back out of the CDD portion.\u201d<\/p>\n Hurtak pointed instead to Ybor<\/a> Harbor and Gasworx. \u201cBut that money is only available to them after they\u2019ve completed the work. It\u2019s a reimbursement grant,\u201d Hurtak said. \u201cI have no problem working with infrastructure paid after the fact because that could be considered a benefit to the community. But paying for it upfront is just not necessarily something that a government needs to be doing for the private sector.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s different from where the money comes from,\u201d Hurtak said. \u201cThe amount of money going in is not different.\u201d<\/p>\n The reimbursement would depend on property-tax growth inside a new tax increment financing district. \u201cIt will draw a boundary around the whole project, not just the ballpark,\u201d Carlson said on the podcast. \u201cThe property taxes will be on the private sector buildings like the hotels<\/a> and the office buildings and apartments, but also on the skyboxes and other private facilities inside the ballpark. And so all that money will go into the TIF and then it will be split three ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Those shares would go to Tampa, Hillsborough County and a community development district, or CDD. Tampa\u2019s portion would feed a proposed citywide infrastructure fund, while the CDD could use its share for publicly owned infrastructure inside the project and, according to Babby, potentially capital work at the county-owned stadium. <\/p>\n Hurtak said Babby did not have the allocation figures when she met with him the previous week. Without the CDD\u2019s percentage, council members cannot calculate how much revenue would be available to reimburse Tampa or how long the city could wait to recover its advance.<\/p>\n \u201cAre all of those TIF dollars going to pay off the loan?\u201d Hurtak said. \u201cAnd if not, what\u2019s the percentage? What is the city getting back? What is the county getting back? How do we use that for infrastructure?\u201d<\/p>\n Clendenin measures Tampa\u2019s participation against what he believes the broader development could produce. \u201cMy position on this has always been one that, for the city of Tampa, this is an enormous win and that we could not have orchestrated something this significant for a de minimis amount of investment,\u201d Clendenin said. He estimated the project could produce \u201c$6 to $8 billion of construction\u201d and \u201canywhere between $50 and $80 billion over 30 years\u201d in economic impact.<\/p>\n Those estimates have not been independently established by TBBW. Clendenin instead pointed to what surrounds Hillsborough College today, describing a \u201csea of asphalt\u201d and 40- and 50-year-old buildings.<\/p>\n