Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

and construction of regional economic, cultural, civic and historic improvement projects. step three: ﬁnd public ﬁnancing resources and create incentives When the plans are in place and there is interest from the private sector, the next step is to identify the “project” with the assistance of the Community Action Team. The CAT becomes involved with the community and the developer to outline project components, which could be rehabilitating an old building, streetscape improvements, an urban parklet, or upper story residential development. Engaging the Community Action Team in this earliest stage will allow for not only deﬁning the project but allow for early identiﬁcation of sources of funding, private, local, state and federal. Projects examined in a comprehensive manner can pinpoint funding gaps in a comprehensive maner. • Housing and Redevelopment Assistance Program: Provides statefunded grants for community renewal and economic development activities that occur on a local level, including housing, business expansion/location, infrastructure and community facilities. • Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program: Provides grants administered through the Governor’s ofﬁce for the acquisition • Main Street Program: Provides funds to help establish Main Street organizations in communities as well as develop and promote economic activities and downtown redevelopment for the commercial district. • Elm Street Program: Provides funds to revitalize residential corridors that are gateways to downtown commercial districts. • HOME Program: Provides federal funds to assist in expanding the supply of affordable housing for low- and very low-income Pennsylvanians. • Anchor Building Program: Provides grant and grant-to-loan funds to restore historic buildings that reﬂect a unique community history. • Hometown Streets • Safe Routes to School SEE DISCUSSION OF STATE FINANCING PROGRAMS BY JACKIE PARKER Municipalities have also raised ﬁnancing locally to ﬁll the gaps and make a project viable. Pottstown created a Tax Increment Financing District to raise funds. Other municipalities have issued bonds, actively recruited businesses to a Keystone Opportunity Zone or taken advantage of the HUD 108 program by borrowing against their annual Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. 56 SEE CASE STUDY TWELVE & THIRTEEN Case Studies 11 – 12 11. Establish a TIF: Pottstown The city of Pottstown, in Montgomery County, worked with the Community Action Team to create a TIF (tax increment ﬁnancing) district to raise money needed to ﬁnance a large downtown redevelopment project next door to the Borough hall. TIF is a newly popular tool for closing funding gaps. It allows tax revenues to be deferred and instead used to pay for the cost of redevelopment. When a TIF is used, a municipality freezes taxes at a site, calculates the anticipated post-development increase in tax revenue, and arranges a loan or bond based on that anticipated increase. Montgomery County, Pottstown’s Borough Council and the School District agreed that 75% of new taxes from the redeveloped property could fund redevelopment costs for the Security Trust building. The Montgomery County Redevelopment Authority is supervising the TIF. One quarter of the increase in tax revenue is being paid to the Borough and School District. Since the property’s assessed value rose went from $200,000 to $2.4 million, that 25% has been a signiﬁcant revenue generator for the Borough and local schools. The TIF has also provided $350,000400,000 of revenue to ﬁnance the redevelopment project. 12. Recruit to KOZ: Scranton Pennsylvania’s nationally famous Keystone Opportunity Zone tax abatement program offers the temporary elimination of state and local taxes for seven to 10 years in designated commercial and residential sectors. The KOZ program attracts new companies and residents who will add to a municipality’s tax base at the end of the abatement period. Scranton’s 63 KOZ designated areas attracted over 1,000 new jobs paying from minimum wage to over $200,000 in annual salary as of mid-2006. The 26 new businesses that have opened in Scranton’s KOZ include retail stores, a coffee shop, and a trucking company. In addition, the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce and its two corporations, SLIBCO (Scranton Lackawanna Industrial Building Company) and MetroAction, established the Scranton Enterprise Center, a business incubator in a $10 million, 64,000 square foot facility in downtown Scranton. Mayor Doherty worked with the Chamber to obtain a KOZ designation for a downtown area and provided $250,000 in public funding for infrastructure improvements at the site. The 2nd ﬂoor of the Center currently serves as a business incubator for 11 small companies that together employ about 50 people. Four companies that graduated from the incubator have relocated elsewhere in the city and employ about 100 people. The anchor tenants for the Enterprise Center are the McCann School of Business and Technology, which has about 50 employees and attracts about 300 students daily downtown; and TMG Health, which has about 200 employees located in the Enterprise Center. The Enterprise Center thus not only supports start-up businesses, but has brought about 600 jobs and people downtown. p footnotes: step three Notes: 56 It is more difﬁcult to take advantage of the HUD 108 program when CDBG funding do not remain at stable levels Case Studies: p Interview with Austin Burke, President, Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, February 23, 2007. Stacy Brown, KOZ’s success is spelled JOBS, lone disappointment is Southern Union, Scranton Times-Tribune, May 28, 2006, http://www.thetimestribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsi d=16704580&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=416046&rﬁ=15. GOAL TWO: PREPARE REDEVELOPMENT AREA FOR MARKET step three: ﬁnd public ﬁnancing resources and create incentives 32 http://www.thetimestribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16704580&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=416046&rfi =15 http://www.thetimestribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16704580&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=416046&rfi =15

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

PA Community Revitalization Desktop Guide Table of Contents How To Attract High Impact Investment to Core Communities Goal One: Choose One Asset-Rich Redevelopment Area Interviews with Pennsylvania Mayors Goal Two: Prepare Redevelopment Area for Market Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Three: Welcome Investment Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Four: Apply Strategies That Work Conclusion

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