The owner of Northwest Plaza is asking for more than $80 million in public assistance to help make the landmark into a “completely renovated, vibrant, modern shopping center.”
The panel considering the proposal from Somera Capital Management, the mall’s owner, took the financial-aid request in stride, expecting to hear more details of the financing portion of the project at a meeting June 20.
Greg Smith, a Clayton attorney representing Somera and General Growth, a mall redevelopment-and-management firm, Thursday night told the St. Ann Tax Increment Financing Commission that the first phase of the project would need $68 million worth of public assistance. The second phase would need another $18 million, he said.
Tax increment financing (TIF) is a method by which new revenues generated by a project are dedicated for a specific amount of time to funding public improvements related to the project, such as street, water and sewer work. Without a TIF, that growth in revenue would go to the various agencies that provide services in the area containing the project, such as schools, city government, fire-protection districts and others.
How long the TIF proposed for Northwest Plaza would be in place is unclear; the first phase – the rehab of the existing mall area – is projected to take between three and four years. The next phase involves development on outlying parts of the Northwest Plaza site.