Prestwick planners end TIF chase

Their patience exhausted, the developers of the Prestwick Plantation have withdrawn their hotly debated request for tax-increment financing, an economic development tool that would have paid to extend streets, sewers and water to the upscale 700-home subdivision planned for western Cape Girardeau.

"We've been talking about this for three and a half years," said developer Cord Dombrowski of the Prestwick Group. "We had an internal clock ticking all along. Wherever we were in this process, we knew when that clock struck midnight, we were moving on."

The Prestwick Group announced its intentions to the city with a brief letter Tuesday, just a little over two weeks before a Tax Increment Financing Commission public hearing scheduled for Aug. 17.

The commission, headed by former mayor Al Spradling, was going to make a recommendation to the Cape Girardeau City Council. The meeting likely will be held, city officials said, just to wrap things up.

Tax-increment financing, commonly called TIF, allows increased tax revenue from a development to go toward that project's own infrastructure instead of going to taxing entities such as the school district. TIF districts primarily have been used to develop blighted areas.

Dombrowski said he felt that city leaders, the business community and the Cape Girardeau School District, all "failed miserably" to understand what the group was trying to do.

"Unfortunately, they didn't see the merits of the project," he said. "There's nothing else to be said about the proposal or the project that hasn't already been said. We don't need to go through it anymore."

The plans for the development near Dalhousie Golf Club off Bloomfield Road will go forward, just in a different fashion and with a different schedule, Dombrowski said. He said the scope of the project hasn't changed, just the speed at which it can be developed. Dombrowski would not share new timetables for the non-TIF plan.

Dombrowski had asked for approval of $30 million in infrastructure improvements to be made through TIF. The school voted to oppose that plan, contending it would cost the school district $5 million in property tax revenue. In May, Dombrowski scaled back the TIF proposal to $9 million.

Mayor's view

Mayor Jay Knudtson said he understood the Prestwick Group's frustration.

"Since this all started, we've gotten a different mayor, a different city manager and a different school superintendent," Knudtson said. "Unfortunately that could hinder the process. Having said that, a re-education process needed to occur. Right, wrong or indifferent, there is a process that exists."

It also took longer because this would have been the first TIF in Cape Girardeau, Knudtson said.

"This was a new acronym introduced to Cape Girardeau," Knudtson said. "I believed very strongly that the citizens fully needed to understand the concept. I felt as though it needed to run its true course."

Knudtson said he couldn't take the full blame for the delays, though. He said there were many months when there was no communication between the Prestwick Group and the school district. He also said that the Prestwick Group failed to follow his advice to launch an educational campaign to inform the public.

The mayor also admitted to have some doubts about the project. "I do not believe that the spirit with which TIF was originally established was to support luxury condominiums where the sole source of repayment was property tax."

TIF projects should be for projects that will increase sales taxes, he said. He'd rather see TIF used for businesses that will bring in jobs and increase sales tax.

In fact, Knudtson said there are chain retailers interested in coming to Cape Girardeau that might be ideal for TIF.

Dombrowski said that Prestwick Plantation would have created many jobs for home builders as well as provide a boost to the economy when supplies for building homes were purchased in Cape Girardeau.

"It would be a significant shot in the arm for economic development," Dombrowski said. "It's a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar real estate project."

Acting city manager Doug Leslie said that the city is still open to working with the Prestwick Group about getting infrastructure to the development. He said there is a whole menu of other options for financing infrastructure. One, for example, is a neighborhood improvement district, where low-interest bonds could be issued for the work and the developer repays those over a period of time.

"We're obviously interested in there being adequate infrastructure there," he said. "There are several areas that can be explored."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137