LH Press Library
TIF Gives Town Square New Hope
Council passes tax incentives for blighted Skillman Corridor
Lake Highlands People, by Peter Simek
Friday, November 4, 2005
A Tax Increment Financing District, or TIF, perhaps the city’s most powerful and successful tool for combating urban blight, was passed by the city council Oct. 26 to the benefit of the Lake Highlands community.
The “Skillman Corridor TIF’ was designed to breathe new life into Town Square and other retail and residential areas along Skillman Street between Northwest Highway and LBJ Freeway that have devalued and decayed over the years.
One deterrent to potential development has been the cost of demolishing those apartments that line the highly trafficked transit to down town.
As a result, the under occupied apartments with a high turnover rate, have added to the instability of Lake Highlands’ schools and property values.
The TIF will create a public fund to help finance redevelopment projects by repaying the cost of improvements through the contribution of the area’s future property tax increases. As it was approved, there is currently $50 million available to interested developers that can be used for public roadways, utilities, streetscapes, and lighting, as well as public parking, environmental abatements, demolition, and façade purchases in special circumstances.
According to Alan Walne, it is the type of incentive that Lake Highlands council members have been fighting for for years.
“The idea of a TIF was not being batted around when I was on the council;’ said Mr. Walne, who represented Lake Highlands before Bill Blaydes. “The reality was finding people to come in and take on redevelopment. But the financial reality was that there was going to have to be some sort of public participation.”
The idea for the TIF came forward last April. Since then, council member Bill Blaydes and Dallas Citizens Council President and former council member Donna Halstead have worked tirelessly to get the TIF to the council and approved.
“It became the last of many efforts to find some tool for redevelopment,” Ms. Halstead said. “When I was on the council, I looked for a variety [of options]. The council only recently would consider a neighborhood TIF.”
There are seven other TIFs in Dallas, generally located in denser, financial areas of town, such as downtown and the Farmer’s Market.
The hope for Town Square is that the corner of Skillman and Walnut Hill will be transformed into a mixed-use, transit-oriented development, similar to the one at Mockingbird Station.
A DART station was originally planned for the inter section, and Ms. Halstead said that developers have already expressed interest in the project. But she warned that the TIF is still only one part of a complicated process for that kind of development.
“There have been a number who have put forth the idea,” she said. “If you do a transit development, you are going to need to have DART, county, and regional dollars; it makes it more complex and a little slower than a lot of us would like.”
Mr. Walne agreed that development will not happen overnight, but the TIF will set the wheels of change in motion.
With the TIF in place there’s a real funding possibility he said. “There are people that are interested. Now that this has happened, it’ll start falling into place.”
The TIF passed, the council will appoint a board to oversee applications for TIF dollars.
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