AURORA | Aurora City Council unanimously approved removing 22 acres of the blighted Regatta Plaza area from the city’s Nine Mile Station urban renewal plan during Monday night’s regular council session in advance of changes to state urban renewal laws.
City planners said the removal is necessary because of uncertainty surrounding a new state urban renewal law that takes effect next year, giving counties, school districts and special districts more say in urban renewal projects.
Andrea Amonick, manager of the Aurora Urban Renewal Authority (AURA) said before the council meeting that move is due to be made at the behest of the project’s master developer Mile High Development and Koelbel and Company. City planners instead intend to create four new urban renewal areas that coincide with the phasing of the proposed redevelopment as planned by the master developer.
Urban renewal areas are typically funded through the property and sales taxes generated from present and future development in the area for up to 25 years in a subsidy system known as tax increment financing (TIF).
“Each plan has one single TIF and one single project, which corresponds to (the) phase of the overall Regatta Plaza project presented by MHK (the developer),”Amonick said. She said the developers are worried about the phases of the project being affected by a provision in the new law that says any amendment to an urban renewal plan can subject the project to be reconsidered.
Arapahoe County Commissioners Bill Holen and Nancy Jackson spoke in opposition to the plan at a public hearing held during the regular city council meeting Monday.
“The Arapahoe County board and county commissioners have raised concerns in the past of the use of significant public tax funds to pay for private development,” Holen said. He said Aurora’s use of urban renewal to fund development projects has kept counties from receiving the necessary property taxes to provide county services.
Jackson said Arapahoe County commissioners are also concerned about TIF and whether it is a necessity for projects such as Regatta.
“Properties around light rail stations have been developing around the metro area without tax increment financing,” she said.
Aurora Councilman Bob Broom emphasized along with other city council members that Regatta has been blighted for decades and may not get developed at all if the current project is impacted.
“If you want to see this project stay the way it is, then we don’t do TIF areas and we watch this place totally collapse to the point where the county doesn’t get any property tax out of it,” he said.
According to city documents, The Plaza 1 Urban Renewal Plan is for an 11-acre area on the mostly northern half of Regatta that will include 122,000 square feet of retail and mixed-use development, which includes the King Soopers store and surface parking improvements. The city expects that project to be completed three years after the urban renewal area is approved.
The Plaza 2 Urban Renewal Plan covers a 2.5-acre area located on the southern portion of Regatta and would include a 200-unit residential development with parking, according to city documents. That project would follow the Plaza 1 project and be completed within three years of being approved, according to city planners.
The Plaza 3 Urban Renewal Plan covers a 3-acre site located on the southwestern portion of Regatta, according to city documents. It is planned to include a mixed-use project with approximately 156 residential units and 17,000 square feet of retail space, as well as the associated parking and public improvements. City planners said this project would begin soon after the Plaza 2 project and be completed within five years of its approval.
The Plaza 4 Urban Renewal Plan includes an approximately 5.4-acre site on southeastern portion of the Regatta Plaza site. It is planned to include an office building with associated parking as well as additional commercial development, and will follow the successful implementation of the Plaza 3 project. Full development of the site is expected to occur within five years of the plan approval.
House Bill 1348, signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper earlier this year, gives counties and school districts three voting seats on 13-member urban renewal authorities if they are within the boundaries of an urban renewal project. Aurora has an 11-member city council who also all serve as voting members on the Aurora Urban Renewal Authority.
Under the new law, all of the entities will have to agree on how and when TIF monies are pledged to a developer, and on ways to offset the impacts of new development. If an agreement can’t be reached on a project, it will go through a binding mediation process.
“HB 1348 created enough uncertainty that city council wanted to make whatever plan amendments they could prior to the effective date of the law to ensure projects that are in the pipeline to improve Aurora,” Amonick said prior to the meeting.
Kevin Bommer, deputy director of the Colorado Municipal League, said Aurora is just one of several cities across the state struggling with the new law.
“The urban renewal authorities and municipalities they are associated with are having to do a lot of work to try to interpret and create certainty over bad drafting that made it into law,” he said.
On Monday night, AURA also received final, unanimous approval from Aurora City Council to acquire a large section of the Regatta Plaza area via eminent domain powers for the Nine Mile Urban Renewal Plan.
The parcels — owned by John Buckley and Romesh Sharma — constitute the vast amount of land between the King Soopers along South Parker Road and the Key Bank at East Cornell Avenue.
Those hold-outs, the city says, caused delays in finalizing deals with Key Bank and King Soopers and held up progress on the plans for the site across from what has been the city’s primary hub for light rail and bus service prior to the creation of the upcoming “R Line,” due to open in 2016.
Amonick testified that the city and MHK have made several unsuccessful attempts to work with the holdout owners.
“Our sincere hope is we won’t have to file any case in court and will do so as a last resort,” she said.
Aurora City Attorney Mike Hyman said if a property is condemned, the owners would be paid fair value for it.
So it’s not going west of Peoria anymore?
Crony Capitalism at its best..
Much more details are needed. Right now Nine Mile has less than optimal parking. What stores are going in. What about west of Peoria will that be developed from the mishmash it is now? It seems that a bigger better usage of those properties can be in visioned.
It’s starting to look to me like Aurora is fast on the way to dropping the ball big-time on this, and this after twenty years of watching the area turn into a dump. And I too wonder what happened to redevelopment on the other side of Peoria. This article seems to raise more questions than it answers.