Here it is. I'm working hard to control my potty mouth. You're never going to believe how much the gap is . . . Seriously, after all those changes and new plans, it couldn't be $16M could it?
Oh yeah baby, it is. This is the third pretty major redesign and still the gap is exactly $16M. What kind of hocus pocus are they doing with the numbers?
Check it out, here it is.
Former TIF blogs on the Edgewater are here and here. Read those to look at previous issues and I'll probably have more to say on this once I get a better look at it.
Enjoy!
And good thing I'm workign 9 - 8:30 today and 9 - 6 tomorrow so have I extra hours to deal with all the news today.
The $16 million is supposedly for "public access to the lake" but the pier and waterfront dining platform, which most Madisonians associate with the Edgewater, are no longer in the project plans.
ReplyDeleteI want to hear Gromacki and the Board of Estimates justify a property assessment of $42 million which works out to $221K per room when the Monona Terrace Hilton is $78K per room and the Concourse is $47K per room.
ReplyDeleteRemember folks, if Edgewater's actual assessment turns out to be less, then the annual tax increment to pay off the TIF loan is less and the loan takes longer to pay off. Gromacki's earlier calculations had the loan paid off 16 years after stabilization or 18 years from now. This was perilously close to the 2030 end date of TID 32, and that only worked with an even higher assessed value.
Once the project is built and the $16 million is spent, Edgewater will undoubtedly use the assessments of other downtown hotels to argue for the lowest assessment possible. State law says the city is responsible for any TIF loans that aren't paid back when TID 32 closes. Will the city be left holding the bag for Dave's toy?
I'd like to hear the BOE, the mayor, council president Clear and alder Bruer accept the extraordinarily high projected assessment on which the TIF calculations are based, while watching Bruer with a straight face pronounce they "have a legal and moral responsibility to the taxpayer to protect the financial integrity of the community."
I'm anxious to see them respond to some of the TIF questions as well. But, I'm wondering which alder will actually ask them?
ReplyDeleteDean Mosiman in the WiSJ reports that Gromacki now says that with Edgewater, TID 32 could close in 2019. This would be only 7 years after building completion but the new plan needs significant exceptions from a number of TIF policies including the 50% rule.
ReplyDeleteSomething has to give in order to close TID 32 in just seven years when the previous estimate was 16 years after stabilization.
I suspect that Gromacki no longer includes much in the way of public works benefits for the area, benefits that Dave has bragged about loudly in his Edgewater pitch. But the math becomes simpler and Edgewater ends up paying back only a portion of it's $16 million before TID 32 closes. Taxes from other properties pay the rest.
For even this scenario to work, the sky high projected assessment of $42 million is still needed.
Gromacki also mentions a $15 million "personal guarantee" from Landmark X LLC. But as the BOE found out his week with Monroe Commons LLC, collecting from a limited liability corporation may not be easy. At the same BOE meeting Gromacki said the 50% rule was important to provide a security cushion for repayment but now for Edgewater, he's tossed it overboard.
The personal guarantee, which is what tanked the Gorman project is what freaked me out. That was only $2.2M and it was a deal breaker, what's the change?
ReplyDeleteBrenda,
ReplyDeleteThe State Journal article has a lot more information about Hammes' TIF application than the brief document of your link. In fact, many of the details spelled out in the article sound more like the city's proposal for structuring the TIF than a developer's request.
Do you think there are more documents from the developer or did the State Journal get something akin to a press release from Joe Gromacki? I'd guess that Gromacki has been working on this right along with Hammes and Hammes'"application" is more of an end product than a starting point. The points made in the article, including the exceptions to TIF policy,
sound like a summary from the city TIF office more than from Hammes.