Palmetto’s experience this past week with a taxpayer-supported community redevelopment investment harkens back to Bradenton’s earlier this year.
The Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency’s decision to approve the sale of a downtown building for $100,000 quickly generated objections about the price. The tax-funded CRA bought the property for $764,500 several years ago.
Isn’t that a $664,500 government giveaway to private enterprise?
In May, when Bradenton’s Downtown Development Authority came up with a deal to hand a developer 3.4 acres on 14th Street West for $576,000, the outcry came swift and certain since the DDA paid $2.1 million for the property. The difference? Almost $1.6 million.
Would taxpayers be giving away too much in either deal?
Or is the only alternative continued blight and decay? Fourteenth Street’s heyday went south decades ago. Palmetto’s aging building continues to deteriorate, adding to the distress in the Main Street business district.
Investing in public-private partnerships is standard operating procedure for communities around the state in order to improve deteriorating neighborhoods and rebuild a city’s tax base and economy with new property owners, new businesses and new jobs. CRAs exist for that purpose — to spend tax monies levied solely for that purpose.
Without taxpayer-supported investment, developers shy away from gambling on investments in downtrodden neighborhoods. The risk is too great. Thus, CRAs.
The unfortunate aspect to the Bradenton and Palmetto properties is both were purchased around the height of the real estate boom. Property values are not forecast to return to those sky-high prices for many, many years.
These two deals raise another question, about due diligence.
Bradenton’s slow approach
Bradenton’s DDA — which serves as the City Council-appointed steward of the 14th Street Community Redevelopment Agency — purchased the 14th Street property in two deals, in late 2005 and early 2006. Three decrepit buildings, the Manatee Inns motel and two homes, were razed — its own small victory for the neighborhood.
Because of the major drop in real estate values, it’s unreasonable to believe the redevelopment agency will get its investment back, and that’s not the intention. The city must invest in this long-depressed neighborhood in order to lure private developers with worthwhile gambles on their own investment. Then the hope is other developers will follow once they see tangible evidence of a turnaround, more tangible than old-fashioned street lights and paver bricks in crosswalks. The development that the DDA is negotiating with Gorman & Company could be that catalyst.
The Wisconsin-based developer beat out a field of companies responding to the DDA’s request for proposals with its idea for a 72-unit residential and retail complex that would cater to the creative class, complementing the nearby Village of the Arts. The project of artists lofts would expand the Village as a visitor destination — and an economic asset. Just last Sunday, the Boston Globe published an article about the Village of the Arts as a “funky” place to visit and described Bradenton as “the little arts town that could.” That recognition and publicity is a boon to the city — and additional evidence about downtown’s greater potential with Realize Bradenton’s cultural master plan.
Email Story
Printer Friendly 
Quick Job Search
@Nyx.replyAnswerText@