Wednesday, August 23, 2023–5:56 p.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
Plans for redevelopment incentives along the North Broad Street corridor are becoming a little clearer.
During Wednesday’s Rome Redevelopment Committee meeting, Rome City Manager Sammy Rich presented a map showing the proposed boundaries for the first North Broad Tax Allocation District. The southern boundary goes around, but does not include the future Varsity location and extends to just north of the former Jennings Funeral Home site.
The City of Rome has been working with its consultant, the KB Group, for several months on the plan, which has evolved during that time. Initially, a Tax Allocation District was envisioned for an area from CVS on Turner McCall, northward to North Avenue, and east to Gibbons Street. However, with 162 parcels, it was determined to be too large and complex, making it much more difficult for city staff to keep track of. So, it was decided it would be less complicated to have a large redevelopment area that would include smaller TAD areas.
Under a TAD, any increase in property taxes stemming from improvements would be funneled back into the project for a set number of years. The taxing entities would have to agree to forgo the money.
“If you put the whole thing into TAD, then you get no new taxes on growth, it all goes into the TAD fund,” said City of Rome Finance Director Toni Rhinehart. “It does not go into the general fund. The larger the TAD is, the more parcels are affected.”
The TAD area was selected due to a couple of feasible projects that are already in the works. Those include a townhome development at the former Jennings Funeral Home site between North Broad and Gibbons Street and a proposed new Home2Home Suites hotel near the Varsity location. There is also a third project already in the works, according to Rich.
“Part of the exercise when we were writing the redevelopment plan is that they would come up with example projects,” Rich said. “Now, we have actual projects that we can plug into the redevelopment plan.”
Rome City Commissioner Jim Bojo asked about the rest of the North Broad corridor that is not included in this proposed initial TAD.
“Those properties are still in the redevelopment area,” Rich replied. “There will be opportunities for additional TADs when we get a project.”
The committee voted to move forward with the proposed TAD. The next will be to get legal advice regarding the advertisement and other matters because there are certain things the TAD statute requires.
