Steel-site developer seeks 15-year tax break
A developer proposing a rebirth of the 70-acre former Columbus Casting-buckeye Steel site on the South Side wants the Columbus school board to grant the project a 15-year, 100 percent property-tax abatement.
The project could bring an estimated 700 new jobs and $4.4 million in incometax sharing with the city of Columbus over 15 years, David Robinson, a principal with the Columbus economic-development and lobbying firm The Montrose Group LLC, told the school board at a meeting Tuesday.
The developer, CRG of St. Louis, also is prepared to donate to the district $252,000 over five years in student scholarships, laptops, job fairs and other incentives, and use a program that would help minority vendors get contracts during construction, representatives said.
“The site only generates $52,000 in property taxes” currently, Robinson said. “When that becomes a factory or a distribution center, its value is going to go up substantially.”
Officials with Montrose and CRG told The Dispatch after the meeting that they had no figures on how much money in property taxes would be abated over the lifetime of the deal.
However, district Treasurer Stan Bahorek showed The Dispatch a spreadsheet provided by the developers showing construction of two industrial buildings totaling 950,000 square feet, valued together at about $27 million, and generating about $592,000 a year in property taxes. That estimate puts the total value of the abatement at about $8.9 million over its life.
Asked what happens if a tenant signs a 15-year lease and then moves away when it expires, leaving a vacant building, CRG Senior Vice President W. Scott Caplan said another tenant would move in and pay the district its full property taxes.
“We’re building an asset for a useful life of 30 years, not a 15-year asset,” Caplan said.
The board took no action on the proposal, and asked the developers for more information. Less than two weeks ago, John Coneglio, president of the Columbus teachers union, launched new contract negotiations by attacking both the school board and the Columbus City Council for “handouts to wealthy corporations.”
“When the city and district approve huge tax breaks for corporations that don’t need them, they drain our schools of resources and shift the burden to individual taxpayers,” Coneglio said in a video posted on the internet.
In other business, new Superintendent Talisa Dixon began shaking up the Downtown administration, creating a new position called chief of transformation and leadership, and filling it with Angela Chapman, chief of elementary schools for the District of Columbia Public Schools. Chapman, a former teacher and administrator in Cleveland Heights, where Dixon last worked, will be paid $147,931 a year.
The position takes away some responsibilities of Chief Academic Officer Alesia Gillison, Dixon said.