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Articles
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| City extends deadline for H Street funding applicants |
VOICE writes, "BY BEN WEINSTEIN
The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development extended its application deadline for Great Streets neighborhood retail funds, including the available $25 million for the H Street corridor.
Applications originally due April 18 are now due by 3 p.m. on May 2. The city will review and refine eligible applications through June 13 and notify selected business owners June 27.
Earlier this year, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that the city would make $95 million in tax-increment financing funds available for six of the city’s Great Streets initiative neighborhoods.
The deputy mayor’s office will choose business owners who successfully demonstrate the financial sustainability of their projects as well as the need for funding.
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Tax-increment financing money comes from bonds issued under the agreement that future real-property and sales taxes from retail districts will pay back those bonds. Tax-increment financing was used to redevelop Chinatown/Gallery Place and the new Columbia Heights retail area.
Commissioners on the Northeast Capitol Hill advisory neighborhood, which contains much of the H Street corridor, said they were disappointed with the city’s eligibility criteria for the funding. In particular, they criticized a 10,000 square-foot minimum size requirement for businesses.
The commission sent a letter to the D.C. Council asking that it change the criterion so smaller businesses could apply.
At a meeting earlier this year, commissioner Bill Schultheiss called the city’s proposal "completely anti-small-business," and the commissions letter said very few lots on the H Street corridor would qualify for the funding.
"The foundation of H Street is based in the diversity of small businesses. Our community needs a TIF program that strives to preserve small business diversity and not large-scale uniform homogenization and consolidation," the commission letter states.
At this month’s meeting of the Near Northeast advisory neighborhood commission, which contains the western end of the H Street corridor, Derrick Woody, Great Streets coordinator, said the letter surprised him.
Woody said people do not realize how large national retailers have helped a number of small Columbia Heights businesses. But he also pointed out that H Street would not support as large a concentration of national retailers as Columbia Heights does.
In March, Sean Madigan, spokesperson for the deputy mayor’s office, told the Voice that it’s unfeasible for the city to offer the funding to businesses on small lots.
"The reason we didn't do it for projects smaller than 10,000 feet is because when you do the bond transactions, there's a lot of fees involved," Madigan said. "Basically, the numbers aren't big enough to support the amount of transactions" there would be if smaller lots were eligible.
The city wants to fund retail businesses unique to the corridors, not businesses already well represented, like fast-food establishments and liquor stores, according to the deputy mayor’s office. The agency also says property owners are “strongly encouraged to include other uses such as office, affordable housing or for profit leasable or ownership space” above retail storefronts, according to the initiative proposal.
Funds can go toward improving business exteriors and interiors, filling vacant properties, upgrading utilities for retail needs or constructing shared-parking facilities.
Other corridors and areas identified for funding under Great Streets include: $25 million for the lower part of the Georgia Avenue corridor; $10 million for Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and South Capitol Street in Ward 8; $10 million for Petworth in wards 1 and 4; $15 million for Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road area in Ward 7; and $10 million for the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor in wards 7 and 8.
Woody said the deputy mayor’s office expects at least one application per each of the six areas.
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Posted on Apr 25, 2008 20:45pm.
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