Cary waives fees to attract new business
Cary officials are so determined to continue attracting new business to the village that they waived several business development-related fees for the rest of the year.
Fees for conditional use permit applications, certificates of occupancy, real estate signs and temporary business signs will be waived, Village President Tom Kierna said Wednesday at the annual Cary Business Roundtable, organized by the Cary Grove Area Chamber of Commerce. The highest waived fee, at $750, is for occupancy certificates, while the others range from $47 to $100, he said.
“We want to create more opportunity for people to come to Cary,” he said.
The village board approved the measure Tuesday.
After a “troubling” couple of years, in fiscal year 2011 there was an increase in building permit and water and sewer tap-on revenues, signaling a promising trend that the village wants to capitalize on, Kierna said. “Things are looking up, we’ve got a lot of things going on,” he said.
Building permit revenues increased from $116,000 in fiscal year 2010 to $166,000 in the current fiscal year, which ends April 30, said Jacob Rife, Cary’s assistant to the village administrator. Water and sewer tap-on revenues increased from more than $50,000 in 2010 to well over $200,000 in 2011.
In 2010, several new businesses moved to the village, including Papa John’s and Eugenio’s Pizza, Cary’s Bakery, and Rack & Roll, all on Northwest Highway.
Other businesses invested in their existing facilities, such as Jewel-Osco on Northwest Highway, which underwent a $1.5 million renovation; and Sage Products, Inc., where a 200,000-square foot addition at 3909 Three Oaks Road will be completed later this year, Kierna said.
New business coming in 2011 include O’Reilly Auto Parts at 356 Northwest Highway, Barrington-based Swiss Automation, Inc., at 185 Detroit St., and Three Oaks, an 80-unit assisted living community to be built on 5.9 acres at Three Oaks and Silver Lake roads. The facility’s website says it will open in December.
Colorado-based Spectrum Retirement Communities, which will build the facility, contributed about $557,000 in impact fees to the village, including building permit fees, water and sewer tap-on fees, and $250,000 to partially offset the cost of on-site road improvements that the village will have to undertake, Kierna said.
In addition, village officials negotiated with Spectrum a $50,000 donation to be split equally among the Cary Park District, Cary Community Consolidated School District 26, Community High School District 155, the Cary Fire Protection District and the Cary Area Public Library, Kierna said.
Kierna also said “a major national retailer” is looking at building on one of two sites on Northwest Highway on the east side of Cary.
The village’s three-year, $5 million street resurfacing program, mostly funded by federal bonds and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will end in 2012. The village budgeted $1.5 million for the program in 2011, but officials haven’t finalized the list of streets yet, Kierna said.
A couple of people in the audience complained about the lack of long-term parking for downtown business owners, saying they often have to repeatedly move their cars from two-hour parking meter spots. Village Administrator Cameron Davis said that routine checks by village staff show that a few six-hour parking meter spots are open at all times, even if they are not located right in front of the businesses.
Kierna, who called this “a good and bad problem to have,” said the village will look into possible solutions for the downtown parking situation, although he cautioned that parking garages are “extremely expensive to build.”
About 70 people including village officials and business owners attended the event.