As student housing projects have blossomed along the Kimbrough Avenue corridor and throughout center city, Springfield City Councilman Craig Hosmer often has been a vocal critic of development tax breaks. Since joining council two years ago, he’s raised pointed questions about tax fairness and the potential strain abatements cause on the city services supported by property taxes.
But at the March 23 City Council meeting, Hosmer was pleased to see a pair of blight bills.
“Two blight bills I can support,” Hosmer said, with a hint of irony in his voice, in response to the bills introduced by Planning and Development Director Mary Lilly Smith.
The blight designation, which requires conditions such as unsafe or unsanitary structures and obsolete platting, has been around since the 1960s, but it gained traction in recent years with area developers largely focused on student-housing projects.
Hosmer, who approaches abatements conservatively, has witnessed about a dozen projects approved for tax breaks on improvements during his time on council. He’s voted to approve one: a Hotel Vandivort request he said could produce long-term jobs.
In January, the issue appeared to come to a head when officials for three center city projects simultaneously sought abatements on new improvements in blighted districts. Councilwoman Cindy Rushefsky inquired as to how the city could “unblight” properties that had been remediated, fearing tax breaks could come in the future to developers building in areas where the rundown conditions are no longer present.
In the last council meeting, Smith followed through on a commitment two months ago to present a bill by the end of March that could eliminate the blight designation in areas where remediation had occurred.
The two measures would remove designations around University Plaza Hotel and Convention Center and immediately surrounding Missouri State University.
Smith said the University Plaza redevelopment area was established in 1983 and a second tract was added in 1989.
“It includes the former Sears department store and the old University Inn motel. If you’re like me, I can barely remember when there used to be the old University Inn,” Smith told council.
The Sears store became the Springfield Exposition Center, and the motel was transformed into University Plaza’s detached convention center, she said, adding all property abatements ended in 2013.
The MSU blighted district – bordered by Cherry and Grand streets to the north and south and Holland and National avenues to the west and east – dates back to 1965, Smith said.
A swath of properties west of Holland would remain blighted under the proposal.
A third bill related to increasing the cost to seek tax abatements on development projects also was introduced at the meeting. Smith said the fee-schedule change intends to cover 100 percent of the city’s estimated costs related to the blight and tax-incentive proposals.
The bill would increase fees for the 25-year Chapter 353 abatements to $2,038 from $1,245 and change three fees for the 10-year Chapter 99 abatements.
The proposed fee for a Chapter 99 redevelopment plan and blight report would be $1,752, up from $750, while the cost for work on a redevelopment plan only would move to $1,364 from $750. The application fee for a Chapter 99 abatement request would cost $359, up from $250, under the proposal.
During the public hearings, no members of the public spoke to the blight-related bills, which are scheduled for a vote April 13.
Moon City CreativeCity staff introduced the first proposed zoning change for the recently created Moon City Creative District and sent a second proposal back to the Planning & Zoning Commission for future consideration.
A strategic plan for the live-work district was created in December with the intent of attracting and retaining artists, writers and small-business owners to the Woodland Heights neighborhood.
The bill would change multiple residential zoning designations north of Chase Street, west of Washington Street, south of Atlantic Street and east of Broadway Avenue to the Live/Work Overlay District No. 1.
Four speakers addressed council at the meeting, and all were in favor of establishing the district that would allow up to two nonresidents to work in homes within the boundaries.
Under the proposal, no more than 50 percent of the residential space could be devoted to commercial space.
Springfield musician Steven Ames, who regularly plays on Commercial Street just south of the neighborhood, said the zoning change supports the desire of residents to produce a culturally eclectic community.
“As a songwriter and performer, my workspace at home is as important and viable to my craft as the venues I perform in,” Ames said. “So, the idea of a creative live-work district that would encourage a community of artists and craftspeople to grow and thrive together as part of the greater community sounds pretty good to me.”
Brendan Griesemer, the city’s neighborhood conservation manager, said a second bill focused on changing manufacturing designations at the southern edge of the district was returned to P&Z to address concerns related to property uses.
“That dealt mostly with the higher-intensity uses, like manufacturing uses, along Chase,” Griesemer said. “(Highway manufacturing) is what the current zoning is, and when it’s changed to a planned development, some of the accessory codes related to screening and distances from residential areas kicked in. We have several outdoor storage uses there, and (property owners) expressed that concern, so we had to rework some of the language. And anytime you rework that language, that changes the bill as it is going forward, so it needs to head back to Planning & Zoning.”
Council voted unanimously to send the proposal back to the planning group.
Griesemer said he expects the manufacturing rezoning proposal to head back to council’s desk in May.
