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An aerial photo of the proposed site. 📸 Credit: St. Charles Committee of the Whole agenda packet
The St. Charles Committee of the Whole voted unanimously Monday to recommend hiring a consulting firm as the first formal step toward creating a new tax increment financing (TIF) district that could help Pulte Homes build 105 homes on a long-vacant industrial site near downtown.
Here's what to know:
New name, same project: The development, previously pitched to the Plan Commission in April as Ninth Street Commons, is now called Seventh Street Commons. It's still the same 28-acre site, which is the former Applied Composites manufacturing property north of State Street, vacant since operations ceased in the early 2000s. The concept calls for 93 single-family homes and 12 townhomes.
TIF details: Pulte is asking for help covering the cost of relocating city-owned electrical lines that run through the property, an expense staff estimated at under $3 million. City documents suggest the new TIF district would generate enough tax increment to pay that back within three to four years.
A TIF for this site failed once already: The city created a TIF district for the property in connection with the Lexington Club development, approved in 2013 and revised in 2015. That project fizzled and the development stalled.
The committee recommendation: Officials voted to recommend a contract with consultant SB Friedman Development Advisors (for $35,910) to study TIF eligibility and prepare a redevelopment plan, plus an inducement resolution expressing the city's intent to explore the TIF.
City documents specify that neither action commits the city to creating the TIF district or to any redevelopment agreement with Pulte. They also say that the full designation process will take five to six months and still needs sign-off from other local taxing bodies before it can move forward.
During the meeting, city officials confirmed the developer has already begun environmental remediation work on the site.
Learn more about the project beginning on page 131 of this agenda packet.
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