YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
City of Springfield officials are resurrecting a redevelopment plan that had provided tax incentives for projects along a 3.5-mile stretch of the Kearney Street corridor.
A public meeting held June 24 brought out a mix of opinions from some 50 attendees about the future of the corridor. Some – like Mission University President Mark Milioni – were eager to get moving on improvements and willing to help lead the way.
Others, including Pastors Nathan and Randi Blackard of Northside Assembly of God Church, cautioned that homelessness and a proliferation of the wrong types of developments – primarily vape shops – are problems the city must address first.
The stretch of Kearney Street proposed for inclusion in the amended plan extends eastward from Albertha Avenue and Tom Watkins Park to a point just past Barnes Avenue, near Bass Pro Shops’ headquarters.
The original redevelopment plan followed a 2017 corridor study that identified deteriorating conditions, economic stagnation, unmet retail demand and a public desire for revitalization, according to a presentation at the meeting by Matt Schaefer, senior planner in the city’s Department of Workforce & Economic Vitality.
A key recommendation following the study was the use of real property tax abatement and the creation of a community improvement district to encourage private investment and to fund public improvements. In the first five-year incarnation of the plan, which ran through 2023, qualifying projects were offered partial real property tax abatement pursuant to Missouri’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority law, which allows an abatement of 100% of assessed value of new improvements for a 10-year period. It’s a tool that requires a declaration of blight to be utilized.
Seven projects were completed under the plan, with six at the corridor’s east end and one at the west. The projects and their developers are as follows:
Asked for the values of the abatements, Matt Schaefer, senior planner in the city’s Department of Workforce & Economic Vitality, said they vary from MMC Fencing & Railing, whose abatement is roughly $10,000 per year, to BigShots, whose abatement is upwards of $100,000. The department doesn’t capture project costs in its data, he said, because financial data is not part of the application analysis, projects at all price points are eligible.
Kent Wellington developed his new MMC Fencing & Railing store on the west side of the corridor, occupying the last eligible lot in the incentive zone.
“We love it,” he said of the 10,000-square-foot store, which will have been in its place five years come September. “It’s been good for business. It’s nice to have everything under one roof.”
Wellington used to have a showroom measuring less than 1,000 square feet near Hiland Dairy on East Kearney Street, and the business had a little bit of storage there plus more elsewhere.
He said the new location is good for his business.
“It’s a good location for us – a win-win,” he said.
Promoting growth
In the last go-’round, the program was arguably underutilized, with only seven projects in five years, and six of those concentrated at Kearney’s intersection with Glenstone Avenue.
Schaefer said some changes to the program might make a difference in its utilization.
One change could be to address design requirements from the original plan, which required durable building materials, like brick, stone or steel, while disallowing materials like cinder blocks, sheet metal or plain-faced concrete for street-facing exterior surfaces. Another would be to strike restrictions limiting curb cuts – that is, entrances and exits from the business to Kearney Street – and instead rely on standards regularly used by builders from the city’s newly passed development code.
“Perhaps one thing that could be done is by addressing some of the development standards in the redevelopment plans to make them a bit more user-friendly and easier to administer – that might be a start,” he said.
But he added market factors – things like interest rates and perceived customer draw – are also key.
“That’s something that we can’t really directly impact,” he said.
Schaefer additionally said the city could do a better job of promoting the available tax incentives.
“Perhaps this program is not being publicized enough – that could be another thing,” he said. “I’ve seen some projects go in over the years that did not utilize this incentive, whether or not they made a conscious decision not to even opt for it or they just didn’t know about it. That may be something that on the city’s end we can do a better job of.”
While the original redevelopment plan had a five-year duration, Schaefer said that’s not a statutory requirement but rather a city code limitation. The city could pursue a longer redevelopment plan this time around.
Councilmember and architect Bruce Adib-Yazdi, who attended the meeting, said that might be a factor in what some view as underutilization of the incentives.
“Projects take time sometimes to gestate,” he said. “If there’s just a window and you have to hurry up and try to get there, maybe there’s not enough time, and so that’s just one thing to consider.”
The initial study of the corridor recommended recruitment of specific retail types to fill identified market gaps, which included food and beverage, clothing and electronics. It also recommended improved placemaking and branding, leveraging the route’s identity as an alignment of historic Route 66.
Deterrents to development
The Blackards, who pastor Northside Assembly of God Church and its day care and are also business owners, were at the community meeting, and Nathan brought up another possible deterrent to development: the unsheltered community.
“We’re passionate about keeping this place safe,” Randi said.
“It’s just getting out of control,” Nathan added.
Nathan said there are things the city could do, like make the county jail less comfortable and address mental health issues.
“It’s not that we’re not sympathetic; it’s just we’ve got to get away from the poverty mindset on Kearney,” he said.
A busy cannabis shop and multiple vape shops make it hard to operate the church’s day care, which serves 60 kids, Randi said.
“I have to chase homeless people off all the time,” she said. “It’s growing, but we also have lots of safety things around us that are concerning.”
The couple also owns private businesses, like a commercial cleaning business, construction business and rental properties.
“The people on the north side of town, they’re struggling to try to pay their rent; the cost of living has gone up. It’s hard,” Nathan said.
One organization that has embraced the north side is Mission University, formerly Baptist Bible College, which has a 38-acre campus in the center of the corridor.
President Milioni said throughout his time at Mission, the advice he’s heard has been consistent: relocate.
“The longer we looked at it, the longer we studied – we looked at some places – we really decided this is where we are,” he said. “We decided to adopt the north side.”
Mission University athletes don “North Side” on their uniforms, and the day of the meeting, its gym floor was being painted with the words “North Side.”
“We’re here. We have really good, big plans for the exterior; we’ve done a lot on the inside,” Milioni said.
It’s something he discusses with the university’s architects from Buxton Kubik Dodd Design Collective.
“My goal is that we will be the center of revitalization on the north side. I want people from the south side to say, ‘We’ve got to go up and see what’s going on,’” Milioni said.
Asked how he views the future trajectory of the corridor, Milioni was upbeat.
“I think it can only go up, right? And I want us to be the catalyst. I want our property to be so well received that the rest of the area takes notice,” he said.
He said he has pushed the city on the issue of sluggish redevelopment on the thoroughfare.
“Where did this go? What happened? I came to all the community meetings before and nothing happened,” he said.
But he said he appreciated the energy he felt at the meeting.
“I’m very excited – very happy,” he said. “They’re starting something, and we just want to be part of it.”
Wellington said the city’s tax incentives were helpful to him.
“They basically paid for the land,” he said.
Of course, there are additional expenses building in the city, versus building on county land, he said.
“I get more traffic here, obviously,” he said. “It’s hard to measure some of these things, but we’re happy we’re here.”
Asked what it might take to get more businesses to take advantage of a new redevelopment plan, particularly toward the center of the corridor, Wellington pointed to an issue with the street itself.
“The biggest problem you have on Kearney is, unlike Glenstone and Battlefield and all these other major roads, it’s hilly,” he said.
There are traffic lights peppered throughout the hills, and drivers maintain a 35-40 mile per hour speed limit.
“People don’t really see the businesses – that’s my perspective on it,” he said. “Over here, it’s flat and leveled out. You hit the light at Kansas Expressway if you’re heading west, and you don’t hit another light for almost three-quarters of a mile down the road. There’s a lot less going on out here.”
There’s no answer for that problem, he said.
“They’re not going to flatten it out; they’re not going to eliminate lights,” he said.
Wellington also encountered a few hiccups working with the city – like building his store from approved plans showing metal sides, then hearing from the city upon inspection of the final product that this would not be approved.
Changes had to be made at an additional cost, he said.
“It’s odd that they couldn’t tell me that right up front,” he said.
He said he was also required to install sidewalks around the building, one of which dead-ends into his neighbor’s bushes.
“Common sense needs to enter into it,” he said.
A big part of the problem with Kearney Street redevelopment is the blight that’s at the heart of the incentive plan, according to Wellington.
“You go and put a nice building up, and what’s next door to you?” he said. “That’s why a lot of these new places don’t survive in that area except vape shops and whatnot. Those are the only ones really surviving.”
A project timeline shows city staff are preparing an updated blight report and amended redevelopment plan with a final draft to be completed in July for presentation to the city’s Land Clearance Development Authority and the Planning & Zoning Commission.
A public hearing and subsequent vote by Springfield City Council is planned for September.
This installment of Springfield Business Journal’s Architects & Engineers Project Report showcases 26 endeavors by area design and engineering professionals.
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