The East Village Growth Cell TIF District Redevelopment Plan and Program report by City consultant Teska Associates was published last week on the EastVillagePeoria.com website. I read the report over the weekend and observed the following:

• The report frequently made reference to the City’s updated (2010) Comprehensive Plan, which has only been published in draft form and has yet to be adopted by the City Council. In contrast, the report never once mentioned the Heart of Peoria Plan, which was completed in 2002, adopted by the City Council “in principle,” and forms the basis for the City’s Land Development Code which governs the East Bluff and near north side. I wonder if the City even provided a copy to Teska Associates. (Incidentally, the City has allowed its registration of the URL “heartofpeoria.com” to lapse, so information on the Heart of Peoria Plan, including the Plan document, is no longer available online from the City.)
• The report does a good job of documenting just how much the City has neglected the so-called East Village area. Here you will find how many streets and sidewalks have been inadequately maintained, how codes have not been enforced and properties have been allowed to fall into egregious states of dilapidation — with pictures! The report concludes that the East Village qualifies as a “blighted” area, just as the City found 11 years ago when the MidTown Plaza TIF was adopted.
• The cost to improve infrastructure in the East Village area (which is “generally south of McClure, east of Knoxville, North of Interstate 74, and west of a variable boundary formed by Wayne, Glen Oak, Ravine, and Glen Oak Park,” and includes the near north side) is estimated at just under $42.6 million. That would include streets, sidewalks, driveways, gutters, curbs, streetlights, inlets, combined sanitary and storm sewer improvements (which alone account for $13.3 million of the total), ramps, and street trees. This is significantly less than the $55 million that was recently spent to expand the Civic Center, and only slightly more than the City plans to spend on the Wonderful Development (downtown hotel). If you isolate the cost of improving the streets and sidewalks alone, it comes to about $9.8 million — only $800,000 more than the City plans to pay Gary Matthews as a developer’s fee to build the Wonderful Development.
• The report includes typical biases against older homes and other structures. “Age of buildings” is one of the factors that qualifies the area as “blighted.” To wit:
  

  The characteristic of age presumes the existence of problems or limiting conditions resulting from normal and continuous use of structures and exposure to the elements over a period of many years. As a rule, older buildings typically exhibit more problems than buildings constructed in later years because of longer periods of active usage (wear and tear) and the impact of time, temperature and moisture. Additionally, older buildings tend not to be well suited for modern-day uses because of contemporary space and development standards.

  And how old does a building have to be to suffer these deleterious “problems” and “limiting conditions”? A whopping 35 years. That’s right, if a house is more than 35 years old, then it’s contributing to blight. Thus saith the State of Illinois.

• The report suggests “improvements” that include things discouraged under the Heart of Peoria Plan, such as wider streets and more parking lots/decks.
• If I’m reading this right, the proposed TIF doesn’t sound like it has much chance of being successful. The report says, “Upon the completion of anticipated redevelopment projects it is estimated that the equalized assessed valuation of real property within the Project Area will be in excess of $96 million” (p. 19). The initial EAV (2009) is listed as $49,626,980 (p. 19). So the increase, or increment (as in “tax increment financing”), would be a little over $46 million. If you take that increment, times the total property tax rate of 8.7548% (that includes the City of Peoria, airport authority, mass transit district, County, Library, Township, ICC, District 150, and Park District), it comes out to $4,059,865.15 in TIF revenue per year for the East Village area. Obviously, this is not a realistic number as the redevelopment projects would not be completed in year one, nor would the property value jump in year one. Nevertheless, let’s take this unrealistically high number at face value for the moment, and times it by the 23-year time span of a TIF district. That comes out to $93,376,898.60 (all in 2010 dollars, of course). The “estimated redevelopment project costs” are listed as $95,000,000 (table 2, p. 16), and include the aforementioned public improvements among other capital costs.

  As you can see, it appears by Teska’s estimates that there would not be enough money generated by the TIF to pay back even the principal on the project cotsts, let alone the interest on such a large investment. This disparity is not addressed specifically in the report. However, the report does list other “authorized sources” of funds to pay back bonds, including funds from adjacent TIF districts and the City’s general fund. It also states that, “the highest priority for the issuance of tax increment revenue obligations shall occur when the commitment is in place for private sector investment necessary to fund the amortization of such obligations,” and that leads me to the next observation.

• The TIF is clearly designed to primarily benefit OSF St. Francis. This isn’t surprising, given that OSF is paying for the study. Two of the eight objectives for the TIF are OSF-specific: “Continue to work closely with OSF Saint Francis Medical Center to accommodate additional enhancements to their campus while ensuring continued compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood,” and “Provide for new housing opportunities within walking distance to major employers such as OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and other nearby employers in downtown Peoria” (p. 8).

  There are also nine (re)development opportunities listed, and four of them are OSF-specific: “Opportunities for additional retail and restaurant uses in proximity to the OSF Campus,” “Creation of additional high density housing opportunities within walking distance of the OSF St. Francis Medical Center, including potential apartments, townhomes, and/or condominiums,” “Continued improvements to the OSF St. Francis Medical Center consistent with their City-approved Official Development Plan, as amended from time to time,” and “Creation of retail opportunities along Spaulding Avenue, such as restaurants and convenience stores, accessible by nearby housing and the OSF hospital campus” (p. 10).

  The justification for this focus is given on page one: “OSF Saint Francis Medical Center is one of the City’s largest employers. Their new Milestone Building shows a major commitment to this neighborhood, as does their City approved Official Development Plan. The TIF will provide opportunities for the City to partner with OSF and other area employers to continue to reinvest in the East Village Growth Cell.”

  A building project alone does not show “commitment to [a] neighborhood.” What shows real commitment is an effort to work with residents to make any building project fit into the neighborhood such that it doesn’t have a harmful effect on surrounding properties. Last year, OSF requested and got approval to site an energy center immediately adjacent to single-family homes against the wishes and petitions of neighbors; they could have put it elsewhere in their institutional zone, but they didn’t want the view of their Milestone Building obstructed. This makes East Bluff residents question whether this TIF project is really going to be for the benefit of the entire East Village area, or if this large area is just being leveraged to make OSF’s expansion plans possible. Those are legitimate concerns that should be addressed before any TIF is approved.

• The proposed Redevelopment Sites map (p. 12) shows most of the redevelopment happening around OSF.
• The Existing Land Use map (p. 5) is riddled with inaccuracies. Several properties are incorrectly shown as being zoned Instutitional. For example, Children’s Home at 2130 Knoxville. Also, the East Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services property is shown as “Open Space.” There are lots of errors like this, which makes it difficult to compare current uses with proposed future uses reliably.
• The report has this to say about the impact this TIF could have on District 150: “The creation of new residential units may increase the school aged population (although existing residential units in the Project Area may contain a small number of school aged children, who may leave the School District if such units are displaced). As permitted by the Act, a portion of Redevelopment Project Costs may be allocated toward capital and operating costs incurred by School District 150 which are made necessary by development as described in this Redevelopment Plan.” As mentioned in a previous observation, there’s not enough increment to pay for all the estimated redevelopment costs, so one wonders how this intervention could be accomplished.

Someone is bound to ask me if there’s anything I like about this plan. Not really. I like the idea that the City of Peoria would improve the public infrastructure. However, I think that maintaining public infrastructure is the City’s responsibility regardless. The City needn’t establish a TIF and take tax dollars away from other taxing bodies in order to fulfill their own responsibilities.

There is a public hearing on this plan tonight at 6 p.m. Per the public notice, “Monday, November 29, 2010 at 6:00 p.m., at the Glen Oak Community Center Library, 2100 N. Wisconsin Avenue, Peoria, Illinois, a meeting will be held to gather public comment on a proposed redevelopment plan and the designation of a proposed redevelopment project area to be known as the East Village Growth Cell Redevelopment Project Area, and the adoption of Tax Increment Allocation Financing (TIF) therefore.”