In a room on the 18th floor of Bank of America Plaza on a rainy Friday afternoon, just hours before the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Championship, the team’s owners, their developer, and Mayor Francis Slay held a press conference which was as void of details as the day was of sunshine.
Maybe it was all about timing. Just seven days after saying they were “not there yet“, the three sides were all smiles Friday saying they had reached an agreement “in principle” on the nearly $400 million new Ballpark Village plan.
In their own words:
Mayor Francis Slay…
Dave Cordish of The Cordish Group…
Bill DeWitt, Jr., chairman of the Cardinals…
$271.2 million of the $387 million project will be coming from Cordish directly. The remaining $116 million will come from bonds which will be paid back through the following mechanisms from new tax money generated by the project:
- $56 million from tax increment financing (a TIF) from the City of St. Louis
- $29 million in tax money from the Missouri Downtown Economic Stimulus Act (MODESA)
- $26 million from a special tax district created around the development (it’ll add 1 percent to the existing sales tax for purchases made within the district and a extra $1 to the price of tickets to attractions within the district)
- $5 million in public bonds to be bought by the Cardinals and Cordish
All of this must still be approved by several state and local boards, including the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and the three-member Board of Estimate and Apportionment (E&A).
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October 30th, 2006 at 9:48 am
How can Slay say “no tax dollars will go to this project” when clearly over $100 MILLION in taxes are going to be deverted to the developers away from public schools and funding city services? Way to spin there, Francis.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Slay is right to point out that even after the TIF and other incentives, the city and public schools will receive hundreds of millions of dollars more in new revenue than they get now — and that no current tax revenues are being used on the project.
October 30th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
How does the City recieve new revenue?
If money is being diverted to the developer, then how does the City recieve more revene?
October 31st, 2006 at 8:12 am
If I spend money at a sushi place shown in the drawings rather than Wasbi on Washington Avenue then my tax revenue is being diverted. Ditto if I bowl a few games in BPV rather than Edward’s Flamingo Bowl or Pin-Up Bowl.
What we do not know is how much of such siphoning from other city businesses they’ve assumed in their calculations. The theory goes, explained by one city official to me, is the BPV will attract new people to downtown (and the city) that currently do not come down. Thus, we will be receiving new taxes. I don’t quite buy it.