By Antonio D. French
Filed Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 10:54 AM
In a room on the 18th floor of Bank of America Plaza on a rainy Friday afternoon, just hours before the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Championship, the team's owners, their developer, and Mayor Francis Slay held a press conference which was as void of details as the day was of sunshine. Labels: Development, Sports
Maybe it was all about timing. Just seven days after saying they were "not there yet", the three sides were all smiles Friday saying they had reached an agreement "in principle" on the nearly $400 million new Ballpark Village plan.
In their own words:
Mayor Francis Slay...
Dave Cordish of The Cordish Group...
Bill DeWitt, Jr., chairman of the Cardinals...
$271.2 million of the $387 million project will be coming from Cordish directly. The remaining $116 million will come from bonds which will be paid back through the following mechanisms from new tax money generated by the project:
All of this must still be approved by several state and local boards, including the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and the three-member Board of Estimate and Apportionment (E&A).
5 Comments:
FYI: Due to technical problems with Blogger that lasted most of the day, this post didn't actually publish to the site until this evening.
10/29/2006 11:35 PM
How can Slay say "no tax dollars will go to this project" when clearly over $100 MILLION in taxes are going to be deverted to the developers away from public schools and funding city services? Way to spin there, Francis.
10/30/2006 9:48 AM
Slay is right to point out that even after the TIF and other incentives, the city and public schools will receive hundreds of millions of dollars more in new revenue than they get now -- and that no current tax revenues are being used on the project.
10/30/2006 11:07 AM
How does the City recieve new revenue?
If money is being diverted to the developer, then how does the City recieve more revene?
10/30/2006 5:17 PM
If I spend money at a sushi place shown in the drawings rather than Wasbi on Washington Avenue then my tax revenue is being diverted. Ditto if I bowl a few games in BPV rather than Edward's Flamingo Bowl or Pin-Up Bowl.
What we do not know is how much of such siphoning from other city businesses they've assumed in their calculations. The theory goes, explained by one city official to me, is the BPV will attract new people to downtown (and the city) that currently do not come down. Thus, we will be receiving new taxes. I don't quite buy it.
10/31/2006 8:12 AM
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