Like last week’s Planning Commission meeting, this week’s post-Independence Day North Platte City Council meeting will be dominated by plans large and small to tackle North Platte’s current and future housing shortages.
Council members will convene their first regular July meeting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, a day later than usual due to the holiday, in the City Hall council chamber, 211 W. Third St.
Highlighting the 19-item agenda are proposals to grant tax increment financing for the proposed 128-lot Village Park Flats subdivision on West A Street and TIF eligibility for an even larger area — this one involving likely residential and industrial sites — between Bicentennial Avenue and Newberry Access.
North Platte’s housing shortage dominates Tuesday’s Planning Commission meeting
They’re among 13 planning-related agenda items unanimously endorsed Tuesday by the Planning Commission. Other notable ones include annexation of a smaller possible housing tract on West 18th Street and configuration of North Platte’s former Motel 6 property as Great Plains Health prepares to build a Sports & Therapy and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Center there.
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Wednesday’s six-item consent agenda includes yet another residential item: the third local application for the state’s North Platte-born “microTIF” property tax refunds to renovate upper-floor Canteen District apartments.
Burwick Investments LLC, owners of the historic 1913 McCabe Building at 115 E. Fourth St. and the 1915 Hotel McCabe Building at 400-06 N. Dewey St. and 115 E. Fourth St., hope to recapture part of an estimated $250,000 cost to update 19 apartments and former hotel rooms and replace the building’s roofs. Good Life on the Bricks is the linked buildings’ most visible first-floor occupant.
North Platte’s first two microTIF projects won council approval in 2022, one of them for renovating upper-floor apartments in the next-door 1917 Knights of Columbus Building at 408-10 N. Dewey St.
The consent agenda also includes ratification of Mayor Brandon Kelliher’s nomination of Jarid Childears to succeed Greg Wilke on the Board of Adjustment. Wilke now chairs the Community Redevelopment Authority board.
As always, the council’s consent agenda items will be approved with a single vote unless a council member asks to remove one or more items.
Three of Wednesday’s regular agenda items — a TIF redevelopment plan, rezoning ordinance and subdivision replat — involve Blue Sky Development LLC’s $75.3 million proposal to fill out the last 40 acres of a 62-acre tract north of West A between Lakeview Boulevard and Dixie Avenue.
Major assault on North Platte’s housing shortage to go before Planning Commission
The westernmost 22 acres of that area, made TIF-eligible in April 2016, contain the Victory Village apartment complex begun with 80 TIF-aided units dedicated last July and cleared for TIF for its last 120 units in May. They also include four intended but vacant “neighborhood commercial” lots closest to West A.
Blue Sky is seeking nearly $9.7 million in TIF for a multiphase housing development between Victory Village and Dixie, starting with 32 of a planned 38 three-unit “triplex” townhouses in an H-shape anchored on West A.
Construction of up to 342 living units are envisioned over the next eight years, also including 42 duplexes, 48 single-family homes and three 32-unit apartment buildings. A public park also would be included.
TIF for 128-lot West A housing project in North Platte City Council’s hands after CRA vote
CRA members Thursday joined the Planning Commission in unanimously recommending the council approve TIF for Blue Sky. If council members agree, the panel would meet once more to finalize arrangements.
The council will hold hearings on Blue Sky’s TIF proposal and rezoning ordinance before voting. The latter would adjust the site’s “planned dwelling district” zoning from PR-1 to PR-3.
The rezoning ordinance, like all city ordinances, needs three “yes” votes at successive meetings for adoption unless the council votes to waive one or two rounds of debate. The TIF request and subdivision replat need one vote apiece.
Hanna:Keelan Associates’ “substandard and blighted” study of 260 acres east of Bicentennial likewise will receive a public hearing. It, too, requires just one council vote to be approved.
The study covers an area roughly bounded by Newberry and lines including or extending from Bicentennial, East Second Street and Golden Road, except for the Farm Credit Services of America campus on East Philip Avenue.
A 43.13-acre chunk of the study area’s northwest portion was rezoned for residential housing in July 2021. Daniel McKeon, who then owned that property, said then he hoped to build at least 100 single-family homes and duplexes there.
The latest North Platte-Lincoln County housing study in 2018 called for 603 to 812 new or replacement housing units to meet then-current demands. Still more housing is expected to be needed as Sustainable Beef LLC and other local economic projects are built and open.
