AURORA | The Downtown Development Authority on East Colfax, along with a tax increment financing to fund it, both apparently passed handily in the district election.
This approval came as little surprise, since most businesses and residents in the area expressed approval of the idea before the election, with no vocal opposition.
The numbers were 95 votes in favor of the Downtown Development Authority, or the DDA and 25 opposed. The tax increment financing, or TIF, district passed with 85 votes in favor and 25 voting no.
“I’ve been here 50 years, so I’ve seen all the gamuts,” Alfonso Nuñez, owner of La Cueva said. “There have been so many organizations, and this is the first one that they can’t take the funds out of the designated area. Plus they have PUMA on board.”
The organization that helped the city create the concept of the DDA is PUMA, or the Progressive Urban Management Associates. The group has shown success in many other cities like Denver and Englewood using the same concepts.
Nuñez was host to Reid Hettich’s Ward I city council candidacy election watch party Tuesday night. Nuñez, Hettich and the other two candidates who ran for Ward I, Stephen Elkins and Gianina Horton, all supported the DDA.
The district boundary designating who was eligible to vote in the special district election was East Colfax from Yosemite Street to North Oswego Street, between East 14th and East 16th avenues.
The TIF district is not a tax on businesses or residents, but instead a tool to finance development by capturing the increased property and sales tax revenue generated within a specific area. So it will take increases in sales and property taxes going forward, and collect them into its own fund for revitalizing the area, including infrastructure, security measures, art, and affordable housing.
Now that the East Colfax DDA has been approved by voters, the next steps will include creating a board of people who will decide how the fund are spend. The board will be created by the majority approval of city council, including deciding the number of people to serve on the board.
“Keep the charm, keep the neighborhood, and quit bulldozing stuff,” is what Nuñez said he hopes to see from the DDA. “It’s the first one that really, really looks like it’s going to do some good. So we’ve only been waiting 50 years.”
The DDA will also be tied to another concept called a Community Development Corporation, or CDC, which would be a community-managed nonprofit organization overseen by a community-based board of directors comprising local business owners, nonprofits and residents. The CDC will now be voted on by the new city council members in coming months.
The CDC will have a larger boundary while engulfing the boundary of the DDA and the two boards for each will have to work in collaboration.
The CDC will not use any of the tax increment funding from the DDA. Instead, it will be independently funded through sources such as philanthropy, corporate and foundation grants, fundraising and sponsorships and a self-sustaining real estate strategy, according to the organization that helped the city create the concept of the DDA and the CDC, according to PUMA officials.
“These, the DDA, the CDC, could be very impactful,” said Brad Segal, president and founding partner of PUMA, in previous reporting. “They’re designed to be community-driven. They’re designed to work in tandem, and they’re designed to operate in a very transparent, open way.”