Here’s the TIF questions that I came up with and wish the council members would have asked last Thursday based on the info I provided yesterday. I’m starting to hear answer to some of them, but this should be part of the public discussion and information that is considered.
– What is the ground lease for the Wisconsin Ave Right of Way? What area does it cover? How much does the city get each year? How was that amount determined?
– Why did the cost of purchasing the Edgewater drop by $1M? It was 5.5M and now its $4.5M
– What happens if the condo sales are not a wash, but instead the developer makes money that could be used to close the gap? Is there a mechanism to reduce the amount of TIF?
– What are the planned boundaries of the new TIF district? Some maps have it going all the way to Blount Street.
– Why did the soft costs drop so dramatically from application one to two. It was $14M and not its $8M.
– Why did all the costs in the project go down, except the cost to the city of $16M. How could the gap be $16M in a $90M project as well as with a $64M project?
– When the gap for the cost of the hotel dropped from $4.4M to $3.5M why didn’t that reduce the cost of the $16M in TIF?
– Why did the restaurant Revenue for 2012 go from $6M to $341,000? And the spa revenue go from $1.5M to $86,000? Jill Sixpack was right, Dunn told me it was because they are now renting it instead of running it. Those are some major drops in revenues and how did that decision change the economics of the project?
– What was the formula used to determine what are costs to public access?
– Is the private driveway park of the public plaza we are paying for?
– How much of the roof of the parking is part of the private development and how much is the public access allocation? $8.1 M for the Garden and Terrace seems like alot if we are also paying another $.8M for demo, $1.8M for earthwork, plus $1.2M for landscaping and $2.2M for the stair and .9M for the waterfront improvements. It looks like we are paying for some of the costs that should be costs to the private devleopment.
– How much are we paying for their private drive to the underground parking?
– Why are we paying for the ADA access, isn’t that part of the cost to the private developer?
– How did they determine we should pay for $4.9M for the parking? Will the public be able to park there or will it cost them to visit the plaza?
– If the parking is paid parking, where is the revenues from that?
– Did they do an appraisal to determine the value of the Edgewater to determine if the price paid for the land/hotel was reasonable?
– If they don’t have any recent comparables for the construction costs how do they know that the costs are reasonable? We keep hearing labor is cheap right now.
– How did they determine the future value of the property, as per the numbers in yesterday’s post, they seem unreasonable compared to other hotels.
– I would have questioned the methodology for the numbers for the 6 story and 1 story versions of the project, but I’m not sure it matters.
– Why doesn’t the project pay back all the loan, but instead the TIF district pays for it? Is that normal? Where else has that happened?
– What is the probability of the Joint Review Board agreeing to the extension of this district?
– Are there any exceptions to policy anticipated when we get the term sheet?
– What is the management agreement for the public space?
– Did they consider the ability to close off the public terrace when calculating what the city was paying for?
I’m sure there is more, but that was what was on my mind. I’m guessing with answers to some of these questions, I would have had even more questions. I did ask one alder why they didn’t ask more questions and they said it didn’t matter, because it would just let the TIF Coordinator keep talking and justifying it and he wasn’t doing that based on TIF policy and practice but on politics. They might have a point, but I still think the information should be out there.
I’m particularly concerned these questions were not asked on Thursday because I think when this goes to Board of Estimates, it will all be in closed session and we won’t have another opportunity to hear the answers until the 23rd when they are flooded with issues to deal with.
