Batavia advances plan to create West Town TIF district
Batavia aldermen are supporting a plan to create a tax-increment financing district for improving a west-side neighborhood.
They told city administrators this week to prepare the necessary documents, and to schedule a vote on the matter early next year.
The city's TIF consultant, Teska Associates, has recommended waiting until 2016 for the vote, saying it will enable the city to take advantage of a full year of TIF power.
The TIF would initially last for 23 years. A 12-year extension could be granted by the state legislature.
The 27-acre area is roughly bounded by Wilson Street, Harrison Street, Walnut Street and Van Nortwick Avenue. There are 85 individual parcels.
City officials started calling the area West Town in 2014, as they began talking about creating the TIF district.
It is mostly residential, but there is a small area of industrial buildings, an antiques shop, and an automobile-service business.
At a public hearing on the matter last week, nobody from the public spoke about the plan.
Earlier in the year, residents had been concerned that too-dense housing was being suggested for the former Shady Hill Greenhouse property on Walnut, in an accompanying redevelopment plan for the district. City officials agreed to reduce the amount of housing units that could be built on the empty site. They also agreed with neighbors who didn't like that only multifamily housing, such as townhouses, was being suggested for the site at Mallory Avenue and First Street where the MasterCast foundry used to be. Officials agreed to redesignate that parcel for a mix of small commercial uses, with housing above the shops.
In a TIF district, property assessments are frozen for up to 23 years. Any extra property tax money collected within the area goes into a special fund controlled by the city. The money in the fund then can be used to help pay for certain improvements to existing properties and public infrastructure, such as streets and sewers, or to assemble properties in packages for redevelopment, among other things.
The redevelopment plan estimates the area could stand about $20.9 million worth of work to improve property values.
The district would be labeled a "conservation" TIF district, because the city hopes to stop deterioration and a decline in property values. According to Teska representatives, property values have declined for four of the last five years.