TIF plan includes land outside district

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Nobody really knows which properties are included in the Jordan Valley Park TIF District ... including the city of Springfield.|ret||ret||tab|

SBJ research has discovered that approximately two-thirds of the legal description for Project Area 6, a parking project to be located on the south side of East Trafficway, is wrong. The majority of the property described is not located on Trafficway. In fact, it is not even in the TIF District.|ret||ret||tab|

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Through the mill?|ret||ret||tab|

The properties in question turned out to be the former Lipscomb Grain & Seed facility, which is about half a mile outside the TIF District, and the Tindle Mills complex, located across Chestnut Expressway from the TIF District.|ret||ret||tab|

Joe Costello, leasing agent for the former Lipscomb mill site, said the inclusion of the property in the TIF legal descriptions was news to him. The site's owner, Clay Frisbie of Petra Rock Climbing Gym, definitely has plans for the property. "He's spending money on the building, fixing it up, and we're getting tenants in it," Costello said. |ret||ret||tab|

He added, "We're thinking our plans are, with Jordan Valley Park being right at the door, parts of (the building) could be offices and parts of it could be loft apartments and some of it could be more retail type ... it would be a mixed use is our long-term goal for that property."|ret||ret||tab|

Costello said he didn't know how the property showed up on the TIF plan, but he speculated it could relate to the previous owner.|ret||ret||tab|

"At one time, before the current owner bought it, Archer Daniels Midland was the owner of that property and they were discussing giving it to the city, and at that time, it may have been included as something that the city had plans for," he said. |ret||ret||tab|

"I'm hoping ... that was probably just something that's a couple of years old and there probably was no reason to change it. |ret||ret||tab|

"And the city may have other plans too, you never know," he said with a laugh.|ret||ret||tab|

Bill Stuever, regional director of operations for Consolidated Nutrition, was equally surprised to hear that his company's property, Tindle Mills, was included in the legal descriptions. |ret||ret||tab|

"My first response to that is, I'm confused," Stuever said. |ret||ret||tab|

"There's been no money exchanged hands, we have not sold to Jordan Valley and I'll be honest with you, what I've determined by making a couple phone calls here is that the city's made a mistake in terms of their legal descriptions for this property and included it when they shouldn't have."|ret||ret||tab|

He added, "Our status is that we're still a privately held company and there's not been any transactions, no negotiations and it comes as a total surprise to me that someone included our legal description into another project."|ret||ret||tab|

Mary Lilly Smith, economic development coordinator for the city of Springfield, also had no idea the mill properties were included. |ret||ret||tab|

"If that's actually what (the legal description is) describing, then that's incorrect. But I don't purport to have any expertise in reading legal descriptions so I'll have to have someone who does check that," Smith said in a May 16 phone interview. |ret||ret||tab|

Later she said, "We're still reviewing those and it appears that there might be some problem with that legal description so we're looking at that ... if we need to, we'll certainly make some minor legal adjustments whatever we need to do on that."|ret||ret||tab|

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Old Springfield|ret||ret||tab|

The actual property descriptions included in the plan were generated by the Planning and Law departments of the city from recorder of deeds information. "Those were copied right off the deeds," Smith said. "That's what we're looking at, to see if there was a mistake when those deeds were pulled." Instead of typing in the descriptions, "we just made a copy of the deed and dropped it in (to the TIF plan document) because ... you can really make a lot of mistakes if you try to type the legal descriptions in."|ret||ret||tab|

Properties in center city often have complex legal descriptions because of the age of that portion of the city. |ret||ret||tab|

"Frankly that is the big problem in center city whenever you try to do something with legal descriptions ... they are so old," Smith said. "If you're lucky they're in a subdivision and it will say a lot and a block number of a certain subdivision, but a lot of them are metes and bounds descriptions, some of them have gone through a number of lot splits."|ret||ret||tab|

In metes and bounds descriptions "you take a spot on the earth and you describe it as going X feet from that spot, or in this case, there are poles, rods and lengths from a certain spot to another spot, and then trying to describe a shape."|ret||ret||tab|

For example, under Project No. 4, one description reads: "Being the southeast corner of lot of land formerly owned by one Mitchell, thence east with the bearing of said (St. Louis) road six poles and 8 1/4 links. ..."|ret||ret||tab|

However, in terms of whether more current descriptions could have been used, especially in the case of properties listed by obsolete subdivision names, Smith said, "We pulled what we believed to be the newest deeds using the recorder of deeds records."|ret||ret||tab|

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Changing the plan|ret||ret||tab|

Making changes to the TIF plan apparently is no problem, according to city officials. Already, in activating Project Area 1 last October, the city had to amend the legal description because the description for Project 1 was mixed with the description for Project 2.|ret||ret||tab|

"I'm sure there's going to be some other adjustments that will have to be made," said Springfield City Manager Tom Finnie, adding that Project Area 6 is "not even an activated area."|ret||ret||tab|

On the issue of severability whether the flaw in the legal descriptions might invalidate or otherwise affect the TIF plan as a whole Howard Wright, city attorney, said until he has all the facts, he cannot comment.|ret||ret||tab|

"I'm a lawyer and I represent the city, and I've heard about this but, without reviewing it, I'm just not in a position to comment one way or the other," Wright said, adding that as soon as he is able to address the issue, he will. |ret||ret||tab|

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