ANGOLA — The Angola Economic Development Commission adopted a resolution recommending designating Terrace Place Apartments as an Economic Development Target Area and providing tax abatement to the property at its meeting Tuesday.
The total value of this proposed tax abatement is estimated to be $1,152,988.
The resolution aims at encouraging economic development and providing additional residential housing in the community.
A memorandum prepared by the Steuben County Economic Development Corp. outlining the total value such a project would bring to the City mentions overall property investment of $9,200,000, estimated real property taxes of $1,549,328 with net present value of $927,109, and return on investment of $2.344 for each dollar of incentive, according to commission report.
Terrace Place Apartments covers 7.66 acres. The state allows up to 15% of the total geographical area of the city to be designated as an Economic Development Target Area, said Angola Economic and Planning Development Director Jennifer Barclay. Currently, Angola’s economic development target area is around 13% of its total geographical area, she added.
Terrace Place Apartments located along Terrace Boulevard, north of the current Terrace Ridge development, was designated the economic development area to relieve conditions of unemployment and underemployment” and encourage “economic development by providing additional residential and housing through the redevelopment or rehabilitation of real estate,” reads the document.
The resolution also states that the commission through the city and the Steuben County EDC has previously investigated, studied and assessed “the desperate need of additional housing units of many sizes within the city, including those that provide for additional job opportunities within the City by providing workforce housing.”
The commission recommendations to the Angola Common Council, reads the resolution, include designating the real estate as an Economic Development Target Area because such area has become “undesirable for, or impossible of, normal development and occupancy because of a lack of development, cessation of growth, deterioration of improvements or character of occupancy,” and others.
Earlier the Executive Director of the Steuben County EDC Isaac Lee submitted a memorandum addressed to Mayor Richard Hickman on 10-year modified tax abatement for the Terrace Place Apartment project to add over $9,200,000 in new real estate to its parcel creating 61 units of new housing for the Angola and Steuben County market.
“As the prior Housing Strategy Study showed, we are in desperate need of housing units of many sizes,” said Lee.
He said that the market rate housing project would help the city to fill some of the need and to bring them closer to the numbers that would have a positive impact on population assuming that the company would remain in business at the same location for the next 15 years.
“Though they were not included in my calculation, we can assume that these new units will provide opportunities for population increase and opportunities for our current unfilled positions with employers to be filled,” said Lee.
Source : KPC News
