Fairview Heights council creates two TIF districts

City aldermen on Tuesday created two neighboring TIF districts on the city’s north side.

One district, known as the Ludwig Drive TIF, encompasses the Fairview Heights Plaza shopping center that suffers from a high vacancy rate. The other, the Illinois 159 North TIF, covers vacant land that is significantly undermined.

On the Ludwig Drive TIF, city economic development director Mike Malloy said “it’s going to give us the opportunity to assist the owner in the redevelopment of the shopping center.”

“The shopping center has an extremely high vacancy rate, it’s about 35 percent,” Malloy said. “We hope to work with the owners to be able to entice some businesses to come in and occupy some of that space.”

Sports Authority notably once anchored that shopping center but relocated to a new site at 6575 N. Illinois St. in 2014. The former Ludwig Drive site has been vacant since then. Meanwhile, the store confirmed Wednesday it would close next week.

Malloy said the Illinois 159 North TIF’s 72 acres are badly undermined.

“It’s really a unique situation that the 72 acres has not been developed. It’s a quarter-mile from the interchange of I-64 and Illinois 159,” he said. “The interstate’s been in for 40-some-odd years. When you’re that close to a piece of acreage, you would think it would develop. The problem is the subsidence. Because of that, it has not developed. We’re prepared to go in and assist the developer in shoring up that particular problem.”

When a TIF district is drawn, the total property tax revenue generated from the properties inside the district is noted. TIFs last 23 years, and over that time, any revenue generated by increased property values above that initial amount is captured by the municipal authority. The municipal authority generally uses those captured funds to assist developers in paying for projects, but towns frequently make revenue-sharing agreements with other local taxing bodies so those bodies get a piece of the funds they’d otherwise miss out on due to creation of the TIF.

Aldermen needed to approve six different ordinances —three for one district and three for the other— to create the TIFs.

In each case, ordinances to approve tax increment financing redevelopment plans and project areas for each TIF passed by 9-1 votes, with alderman Dennis Baricevic casting the only ‘no’ votes.

Ordinances adopting tax increment financing for the districts in general received unanimous 10-0 votes.

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Fairview Heights council creates two TIF districts."