LH Press Library
TIF to Spur On Lake Highlands Renewal
Finance district could secure area’s economic growth
Lake Highlands People, by Peter Simek
December 16, 2005
If you ask District 10 council man Bill Blaydes, how the Skillman Corridor Tax Increment Finance district (or TIF) works, his answer is simple and to the point.
“People started getting real on their offers, on the dollars they were willing to pay,” he said of developers reacting to the council passing of the TIF last month.
The financials are a bit more complicated than that, but Blaydes gets at the essential: The TIF could be the tool that finally spurs on economic development in the Lake Highlands area. It is the incentive that may tip the neighborhood into a new era of positive change.
Blaydes said the first company looking to use TIF funds has already come forward, and he is sure there will be more.
“Since it passed, Trammel Crow has asked for some TIF do for its [multi-retail] project on Skillman and Northwest Highway,” he said. “Since the TIF partners Provident Realty and Northwest Realty are back in the hump.”
Blaydes hopes the TIF will encourage redevelopment of older apartment complexes, as well as help push forward the Town Square project at the corner of Skillman and Walnut Hill.
There is already revived interest in land in the TIF district, Blaydes said, including a project already under contract on the corner of Northwest Highway and Plano Road, which will include 250 to 350 townhomes.
The town square project is meant to be a mixed-use development with the addition of a new DART rail station. Although he believes the TIF funds will help get the ball rolling on that project, other public monies from DART, Dallas County and the North Texas Council of Governments also are essential to Town Center’s completion.
Optimistic, Blaydes said that negotiations with those organizations are all on track.
"All the heads are going in the right direction,” Blaydes said. “It will require $9 million [in public finds].”
It is just a matter of time according to Blaydes, who points to downtown Dallas as the latest evidence that the TIF can work if given a little time.
“Most of the model and remodeling in Downtown Dallas was done after the TIF was in place,” he said.
The tax district is a tool that municipalities in 48 out of 50 states can use to spur on redevelopment of an underdeveloped or blighted urban area. In Texas, the legislation that allows cities to create TIFs came about in the late 1970s and early 1980s after a series of amendments were voted on by state residents.
The way it works is somewhat simple, if not ingenious.
When a local government implements the TIF, the assessed property valuation of a given area is frozen for a specific period of time, meaning, the city will collect the same amount of property taxes from the area for the duration specified at the creation of the TIF District.
But as those property values increase, the city creates a fund with the capital earned from increased property valuation that can be used for public improvements in the area or as incentives for developers interested in building in the area.
In the case of the Skillman Corridor TIF, the city of Dallas created a TIF period of 30 years covering an area that includes 740,000 square feet of retail development and 6.4 million square feet of residential development.
Over the 30-year period, the city estimates that an additional $592 million of taxable value will be added to the area, and making these funds available will encourage private development that would not have other wise occurred.
The preliminary fund available to developers total $49.7 million.
Those funds can be used by developers for anything from land acquisition to demolition, street improvements, park design, and more.
The TIF funds are allocated by a TIF board, and Blaydes said confirming the nominations to that board is the next step the council must take to move forward.
Nominees include former councilman Alan Walne, Dallas Citizens Council President Donna Halstead and Lake Highlands lawyer Peter Stewart, Blaydes said.
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