North Platte Planning Commission members Tuesday used their last 2023 meeting to set up fresh showdowns over city aid for housing and economic development at the City Council’s first 2024 meeting.
A series of 6-0 votes recommended TIF and “extremely blighted” eligibility for a swath of south central North Platte; two more annexations of “doughnut holes” in that area; and council approval of a 42-unit townhome subdivision without TIF in northwest North Platte.
Rhodes Enterprises Inc. of Grand Island would build that group of homes on 10.35 acres currently owned by Leva Cochran at 2321 W. 18th St. That site won City Council annexation Aug. 1.
The evening’s only action item not related to TIF or development was a proposed 40-foot extension of radio station KJLT-AM’s 70-foot-tall studio tower at West B and Chestnut streets.
People are also reading…
Planning Commission members recommended the council grant a conditional use permit for the tower extension, also by a 6-0 vote. Kathleen Matthews, Glenn Van Velson and Nelson Jett were absent from the post-Christmas meeting.
‘Extremely blighted’ study at forefront of North Platte Planning Commission agenda
All six items will appear on the Jan. 2 agenda for the City Council, which has generally split 5-3 the past three years in favor of proposals related to tax increment financing, housing or business development.
The Planning Commission held public hearings before votes on two pairs of TIF-related items related to North Platte’s remaining undeveloped areas between U.S. Highway 83, Newberry Access, East Philip Avenue and the South Platte River.
The first pair would voluntarily annex two pieces of land inside that larger area but on opposite sides of a cowboy-boot-shaped area that the council annexed Dec. 5. One covers 41.86 acres to the west and the other 209 acres to the east.
Council members will hold their own hearings Jan. 2 before deciding whether to back the annexations, which will need three “yes” votes at successive council meetings.
They also plan hearings and votes on whether to adopt studies declaring 743.55 acres of the larger area as both “substandard and blighted” — Nebraska’s prerequisite for TIF eligibility since 1979 — and appropriate for the state’s four-year-old “extremely blighted” designation.
The latter status can’t be granted unless an area is first found eligible for TIF, Planning Administrator Judy Clark said. An “extremely blighted” area also must have a poverty rate over 20% and an unemployment rate at least twice the state average, based on U.S. Census Bureau data.
The City Council declared most of the 743.55 acres under study “substandard and blighted” in 1997, Clark said.
It’s being studied again because parts of the study area weren’t annexed until recently, she and City Attorney Bill Troshynski told the planning panel. The new study also include the Cottonwood Estates trailer park and several blocks of existing homes north of Philip.
If the 743.55-acre area is found to be “extremely blighted,” the new designation allows qualified low- or moderate-income first-time homebuyers a state tax credit of up to $5,000 if they buy a home inside it.
Clark said builders of affordable housing in such areas also can gain “special funding preferences” for their project. They also could get up to 20 years, rather than TIF’s usual 15-year maximum, to recover eligible development costs from their project’s increased property taxes.
North Platte’s percentage of TIF-eligible land would grow from 23.87% to 30.14% — not counting the two newly proposed annexations — if the new study area is found eligible only for regular TIF, Clark said.
State law limits “substandard and blighted” status to 35% of the land within North Platte’s city limits. But Clark said the “extremely blighted” law also says land that gains the new designation wouldn’t count against the regular TIF limit.
Lincoln planner Kurt Elder, who prepared the “extremely blighted” study, found that most of North Platte’s north and east sides would qualify for the new designation based on Census Bureau statistics. Parts of those broader areas already have qualified for TIF.
Retired banker Greg Wilke, chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Authority, urged city officials to make maximum use of both regular TIF and the new “extremely blighted” option.
Even if an area gains that dual designation, he said, granting it “extremely blighted” status doesn’t obligate the city to grant the incentives it to every developer proposing to build there. “Every project’s going to have to go through the process.”
He was skeptical before Elder’s study was completed that much of North Platte could qualify for the “extremely blighted” homebuyer and developer incentives, said Wilke, himself a former Planning Commission chairman.
Now that it’s clear they would, “I’m confident that this type of housing will not happen (here) without blighted and extreme-blighted status if you’re going to have single-family” housing, he said.
The likely first applicant for such incentives would be KOW Council, a group of North Platte investors planning a large housing and commercial development within the recently annexed, 158-acre cowboy-boot area between East Philip and the river.
Joe Staroska, one of those investors and a CRA member, spoke about the housing portion of KOW’s plans after commission member Jeff Bain said he wanted to know how much single-family housing was planned in that area.
The group plans to build 354 single-family homes, Staroska said, as well as 277 multifamily units that include townhomes with little to no lawn space.
The eventual employees of Sustainable Beef LLC, related businesses and tenants of the Port of the Plains rail park need the chance to attain good housing conditions or homeownership, he said.
KOW wants to put in homes that can be built or installed quickly and cost about $230,000 each, he said. “You can’t even think of building a home like that by anyone else in North Platte, because there’s not a lot of money in it.”
Because he sits on the CRA, Staroska said after the meeting, he’d have to recuse himself from that panel’s votes on the KOW project. That five-member panel reviews and ultimately signs off on TIF-related projects.
