High Pointe TIF off the table for now

by Nancy Hogland

At least for the time being, Osage Beach won’t be granting special consideration for development of the High Pointe Shopping Center. Instead, they will move forward with condemnation, requiring the property owner to either bring the buildings up to code or tear them down.

At its Dec. 17 meeting, the city’s board of aldermen voted unanimously to repeal the ordinance establishing a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District for the mall. The board had been “sitting” on the ordinance for the past year, waiting for the Raul Walters Companies to develop site plans. Initially, the developer said he intended to demolish the old Wal-Mart building and two-level strip mall and in their place construct a new one-story center with 150,000 square feet of retail space. According to Art King, president of the development company, they were courting retailers like Old Navy, Michael’s and Best Buy and estimated the new shopping mall would provide annual revenues of $508,686 for the city and $321,448 for the county. He also they expected the center to create more than 400 jobs with an average salary of $23,240.

However, according to city officials, lately the developer, who had asked for $5 million in reimbursements thru the TIF, decided instead to rehab some of the old buildings and build a hotel – a plan that didn’t provide the numbers to warrant the TIF.

“We told him that they could do that but it would be done without the TIF. The city gave them $5 million based on the revenues they projected but when those projections are cut in half that changes the whole picture. Yes – we wanted to get something in there - we hate that the center has become an eyesore – but we weren’t willing to ‘give away the store’ to get the mall,” said City Administrator Nancy Viselli.

She said the city was even willing to sign an agreement that allowed the amount of the TIF to be adjusted based on the contracts the developer could arrange with retailers but the developer wasn’t willing to budge. She said the city also understood the predicament the developer was in with ongoing expenses and no income to cover them, but added that the developer made the decision to evict everyone without waiting until we had the final agreement signed.

“I urged him to accept our proposal so we could move forward with this because once the Hammons development starts up, it’s going to change the entire atmosphere.

Stores like Best Buy will be contacting them. Now, if they do decide to come back and go for another TIF, it’s going to be a lot more difficult because the city is going to want everything up front. We have spent a lot of time on this and have nothing to show for it. We won’t go through this again,” Viselli said, adding that she was surprised to see the company had tried to make the city look less than cooperative in the press release they issued.

In a written statement, Craig Davis, attorney for Raul Walters, Inc. said, “The economic landscape has dramatically changed during the time in which we have been negotiating the business points of the TIF contract. As a result, market pressures have begun pushing the project in a different direction from which was originally contemplated. Therefore, we have found ourselves in a situation where the political pressures on the city has pushed for a complete site demolition by election day at a time when the market and economic environment favor a modification and reuse of part of the site. Should the city decide that a redevelopment of the site is in the best interest of the city we are happy to take a team approach with them again.”