Urban Renewal Authority - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call to order the Urban Renewal Authority meeting on 05/13/2025. I am Chair Andrew Moore and we will launch into the meeting. Let's see roll call vote please.

Absolutely. Okay.

Commissioner Pesaromelli. Commissioner Orr.

Here.

Commissioner O'Connor.

Here.

Commissioner Sheikh.

Here.

Vice chair Bell? Chair Moore?

Here.

Commissioner Baer? Present. Commissioner Babbs? Present. Commissioner Morton Valero?

Here.

Commissioner Hoback? Here. And commissioner Kepler? You have a quorum. Alright. Sounds good. We will, move,

right on to the approval of the agenda. Do we have a motion to approve?

So move. Second.

Alright. We have a motion and a second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Alright. We have an agenda, and we'll go on to the consent agenda. Are two items tonight. The first one is item twenty five three zero four approval of the 04/22/2025 URA meeting minutes. And the second item is twenty five two seventy one, a resolution of the board of commissioners of the Town of Erie Urban Renewal Authority approving a reimbursement agreement at the Town of Erie for the Colliers Hill urban renewal plan area. Alright. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second.

We have a motion and

a second. Alright. All in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Consent agenda carries. We'll move on to public comment. Ms. Stamp, anybody signed up for

public I don't think anybody signed up.

All right. We'll move on to two items tonight on our general business. The first item is a resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the Town of Erie Urban Renewal Authority approving a purchase and sale agreement with Diana Shannon Living Trust. And with that, I will turn it over to Julian Joaquin, our director of economic development.

Thank you, mister chair. Good evening, commissioners. There is, nine monitors up here, and I have no idea which one to look at. This is pretty interesting. Appreciate your time, everybody. This this item there we go. Adam is working his magic in the background. My man. Appreciate your time this evening. This item we discussed three weeks ago now in exec session. So, hopefully, most of this information is relatively familiar to you all. Try to keep it brief. We have this scheduled for fifteen minutes. So I'll give probably a five minute overview, and then we can take any questions from you all. And I will go over briefly where the property location is, terms of the purchase that are outlined in the agreement, the reasons for the purchase, and then a recommendation of you all tonight with some time for questions.

As a refresher, this this agreement is proposing to purchase two lots in Old Towne Erie at the corner of Cattell And Wells Street, at the just West of Coal Creek Park. So it's at the Southwest corner of Wells And Cattell. The two addresses are 130 Wells Street and 570 Cattell Street and represent in total about 15,000 square feet. You can see it here both outlined in blue. This is Park to the east and the post office to the west right across the street from the 105 Wells Building where Erie Social Club, and those businesses are located.

This shows the zoning. The dark blue is the downtown zoning, which is the most dense and intense use that or zoning that we have in our downtown area. So it allows for the widest variety of retail commercial type uses. The image is just to show you all. This is now as about a month or two ago what the site looks like from the ground. This is the location of the seasonal Plum Creek Garden market. So you can see the framing that was going up back in March or April when they were setting up the market. The thing in the lower right, I don't expect you'd be able to read. This is from the downtown redevelopment framework study. And it's just included to show that this location is really a true Eastern gateway into historic Old Town.

This is a graphic from a 2016 study, so it's it's not meant to be truly relevant for this. But just to highlight that this location from the East side from Coal Creek Park provides a really, important access point into downtown from the East. The important parts. So the agreement in front of you tonight is a signed purchase and sale agreement from the landowner, Diana Shannon Living Trust at a purchase price of $500,000 The important parts of the contract provide for one hundred and twenty day inspection period after we receive required documents from the seller, Ms. Shannon.

The closing requirements is that we will only close within fourteen days after that one hundred and twenty day inspection period expires, but really only after the URA determines the property is suitable for for that purpose. Why we included that? Part of the terms of the agreement were that after we, sign the agreement that URA will be posting a competitive RFQ request for qualifications that we will seek competitive development interest in the property. As soon as we receive one acceptable proposal, that triggers our ability to then close on the purchase and then ultimately complete all the paperwork to acquire the property. I'll mention here, and it's in the agenda memo that we provided.

We started these negotiations with the owner back in 2022, started putting a letter of intent together back in 2023. So at the time, the last appraisal we completed was back in August 2022. With direction of counsel, we ordered a new appraisal, about three weeks ago. The results just came in yesterday, and the new appraised value was actually above this purchase price, so we are now purchasing it below appraised value, just so you're all aware. These are pretty direct from the historical old town URA planning document, and I also have them in the agenda items, so I won't read them back to you all.

But, basically, the purchase of this property, does allow us to activate it for new development potential, allows the town, the URA to really identify and help facilitate the highest and best use for the property, generates new tax base, new jobs, new retail store opportunities, new sales tax, new property tax, and a really key property within, the Old Town URA. Instead of waiting for the market to dictate itself, instead of waiting for the owner or potential buyer to dictate, that development schedule and and type, this allows the town to really control the URA to control the outcome. I learned a long time ago control the property control the outcome. So our request to you all tonight is approving Resolution 25,028, which would fully execute the purchase and sale agreement with Diana Shannon Living Trust for these two properties in the Old Town URA at that $500,000 purchase price, which would allow us to then start that inspection period post the RFQ and seek that development interest. And with that, I'll take any questions.

All right. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the commission. Couple of questions here tonight. I'll ask one. Sure. The new appraisal that came in, is that coming to us?

If you would like it to, I can share the appraised value is $5.25.

Okay. That I'd like to read the appraisal and, just compare it to the appraisal that we had from August 2022, which I think was a little over 400,000 at Correct. The All right. Other questions, comments? Right. I'll see if there is a motion to approve Resolution 20 five-twenty.

So moved. Second.

The motion is second. Any further discussion? Alright. I'll call the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Alright. Congratulations. Alright. Alright. And then the second item on our agenda tonight is the, basically, economic development overview annual report. And I'll turn it right back over to you, Julian.

Thank you, mister chair commissioners. I'm Julian Jack. I'm the town's director of the economic development urban renewal.

And I am Lockheed Woods, the URA and development accounting analyst for the town.

So those of you that were here, last September will remember we started, a new practice for the year for the Urban Renewal Authority, publishing a new annual report. This is not meant to be a financial audit. This is not meant to be a quantitative report. It is not intended to meet state requirements or anything that we're required to do as an authority. It is intended to be more of a qualitative summary of activities that were completed within the authority in the past calendar year.

The URA operates within the same calendar year and budget year as the town, so it's January to December. So this report summarizes those activities that were completed during January to the December. This is now May, so some of this activity will seem a little bit out of date since we're five months in, which is way better than last year when we did it in September and it was nine months in. So I think we're a little bit more timely this around. This is more just for your information.

A lot of the activities within this just talk about the status of current projects, new business openings, recent investment, TIP agreements and where those are at with private entities, really to summarize those activities completed by the authority by the Town of Erie Urban Renewal Authority within this past calendar year. We put these the report in just a slide deck. It's the exact same file that's attached to your agenda item. It's just easier for us to flip a PowerPoint than it is to flip through a PDF. But the content within the report is all the same. Lockheed is going go through the detail of the report, kind of flip through pages, highlight the important key points, and then we'll come back together at the end for any questions you guys have. I think we have twenty minutes ish.

Awesome. Thank you, Julian. All right. So as Julian, stated, this report is mostly meant to be an overview of the activities that the URA undertook in 2024. As you may remember from the previous URA meeting we had at the April, we are working on scheduling either in late July, late June or early July, hopefully, a more broad overview of how the urban renewal authority functions, a URA one zero one, to speak.

So that is not the intended purpose of this report tonight. But, of course, I'm here to to answer any questions you may have along those lines. So kind of, jumping into it, there's this nice wonderful letter signed by Malcolm explaining the function of the of the URA and how it operates and what its purposes are. But moving kind of forward into a a brief overview of tax increment financing, and and the most important point to kind of focus on here is just to emphasize that the URA is a separate entity from the town. You'll see fund balances for the URA.

There are separate fund balances. Obviously, the the URA Board of Commissioners is separate from the town council even though there's significant overlap. And so the the financial decisions and status of the URA accounts are are separate from what's going on in the town. And the purpose of the URA is to remediate blight through promoting redevelopment. And what you'll see in this report is that in all of these plan areas that we had in 2024, we're making pretty substantial progress towards that goal and have made substantial progress in the past.

So just briefly to go over the plan areas, there is the, airport plan area, Colliers Hill slash Daybreak, historic Old Town, Erie, which we're in right now, 4 Corners, nine mile or Highway 287, And then, Erie Gateway phase one, was passed last year, and Erie Town Center is pending. That one, since it was not active in 2024, is not on the map here for 2024. But jumping right into it with the oldest plan area for the town of Era URA, historic old town, that's right here. We're in it, at the moment. And there were some exciting things going on in 2024, including a new reimbursement agreement that was established with Lucy's Creel Cafe at 554 Briggs Street.

And the finally, we started the construction of the Briggs Street revitalization project. You can all see that ongoing. So that work is hopefully gonna be completed in 2025, but it was begun in 2024. And then there was also the purchase of a property at Briggs Street in Maxwell, which will hopefully finish up the process with the RFQ and be be put to good use here in 2025. So the way the historic Old Town URA operates is there's two kind of major programs.

There are is the Downtown Revitalization Incentive Grant Program, which offers smaller kind of one off grants to businesses for first time siting or reciting and then also for redevelopment of some existing properties. And so you can see here the three grants that were issued in 2024. There was a siting grant for bridge refill market and then redevelopment grants for Solis Counseling and Stacy's Kitchen. You can see those amounts there. And then on the other side of the screen, you can see what happens when we have these kind of bigger redevelopment needs and projects.

So there are five agreements that were in place in 2024, although a sixth was signed in early twenty twenty five. And so these five agreements are with Birdhouse, with, Park West 105 Wall Street, 615, Briggs Street or Piripi, the 700 Briggs Street where Ala Fiber currently is located, and then the Lucille's agreement that I just mentioned. One comment we had last year, was a request to see, okay. Based on how much money is coming into these agreements, when do we think we're gonna have fully paid off these agreements in the reimbursement amounts you can see here. So you can see an estimated completion date in the final column.

That's based on just taking how much money was given back in 2024 and how much is left to to be repaid and kind of just extrapolating that out in the future. Starting in 2013, the historic Old Town URA will end in 2038. So you can see that we are on track to complete all of these agreements before the end of the URA. Obviously, some sooner than others, but we're on track for all of them. And then there are new businesses, otherwise that started in Historical Town URA even without the influence and necessity of funding from the URA, which is showing you the positive kind of externalities of the URA's investment in Old Town.

It's creating a desirable environment for other people to invest, even without the URA champion. So here are the kind of fund data sets showing cumulative tax increment that's been generated. And then the URA property valuation, those are actual values, not assessed values. And then you can see at the bottom, revenues and expenses and the net fund balance. So, expenses were higher than revenues in the Old Town Plain area, but the net fund balance is still substantially positive, which basically just means we're try we have money in the account, and and we're trying to to spend it out in in all the ways that I just spoke about.

And I'll mention just really briefly the reason that the URA, the Old town is carrying a $2,400,000 balance at the 2024 is the bond issuance that URA issued to pay for the downtown infrastructure project. So ultimately, that 2 and a half million dollars once construction is completed in 2025 will fall off and will return down to a more reasonable balance.

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you, Julian. Alright. Moving next on to Daybreak or Colliers Hill URA.

So this is a residential community located at the corner of Erie Parkway and County Road 5. Some of the highlights from 2024 included completing improvements to to West County Road 5, and final design was completed for the pedestrian bridge over Coal Creek that's going to connect Colliers Hill to historic Old Town. So that was the design work completed in 2024 and construction hopefully kicking off in 2025. You can see here the financing piece. So, basically, how much was collected total in terms of property tax, how much the URA actually kept in 2024, and then how much the URA has kept so far going back to 2015, and how much remains until we hit the $14,000,000 cap, when the URA, kind of stops collecting, tax.

And we can talk more about, that because I know that was kind of a point of contention at our our last meeting, or confusion. So we can go over that more in detail at the the URA one on one meeting. But also if anyone has any questions about what that means tonight, I'm happy to answer them. So then on to the fund data sets. Fairly similar story, although this one has a very large net fund balance.

And as I spoke about at the last meeting, we kind of realized that this fund balance was accumulating, and we needed to come up with more, with ways to spend this money. And so that's why you saw the influx of projects and requests in the first supplemental for 2025 is we do have a large, you know, $4,500,000 project planned with that pedestrian bridge, but there's still money to be spent in the Colliers Hill plan area. So we are, working as a staff to figure out the best ways to spend that money.

And was this one also bonded to get the initial amount? No. This is just property taxes coming in?

Yep. This is just property taxes accumulating over the course of nine or ten years. Alright. Onto Highway 287 or 9 Mile. So here you have the multifamily apartments as well as the kind of shopping center with Lowe's and King Soopers.

It was a big deal in 2024. King Soopers opened, and construction is always underway for the last two commercial pads, the Chick fil A and a Valvoline. The way that the reimbursement works in the nine mile URA is that all of the property tax increment goes to the 9 mile metro district, metropolitan district, to pay off the bonds that funded this, and 50% of the sales tax increment does, as well. So those just go straight to the they come to the URA, and then we pass them straight on to the metro district, who realizes them to pay off the bonds. As of the 2024, about 33% of that reimbursement process was completed.

It will take, approximately until 2031 to complete that process of paying off the bonds from the URA proceeds. And then it'll probably take a short, I'd guess, just a year of the property tax increment and sales tax increment coming to the URA to pay off the loans, that the URA has accrued from the town to pay off the expenses that the URA has, legal expenses, consulting expenses at the beginning, and then just its allocation of staff expenses ongoing. So you can see that kind of summary here at the bottom with the collections, how much the URA gets, how much the URA has has collected to date, which is really how much the 9 Mile Metropolitan District has gotten to date, and then how much remains in the reimbursement agreement. And then on the other side, very similar to previous ones, you can see the cumulative tax increment that has been generated collected by the URA as well as the actual value of the property in the URA. This one has a negative net fund balance, which means it is currently has a loan from the general fund of the town to pay for those expenses.

As said previously, we believe that that loan will be fully paid off in about 2032. The four corners URA is kind of central, pretty close to here. It is at the corner of Erie Parkway and County Line Road. You have a mix of different housing types, as well as some retail office and other buildings. And construction is underway, making very good progress at the site.

And infrastructure, roads, utilities, all of the kind of public infrastructure has been completed there. Here, you can see we are still kind of in the very early stages of seeing the tax increment generated by this project. One thing to note is that property valuations kind of work with a two year lag system. So you're seeing here for 2024 is the taxes that were collected in 2024, which is for the 2023 tax year, which means it's the value at the end of 2022. So that's why you may be saying, you know, why is the actual valuation there so low in 2024?

It's because that's really what the actual value was at the end of 2022. And just because of that two year lag, we won't really start seeing the gains from the construction that's been underway and completed at the 4 Corner site until 2026 or 2027 on the property tax side. And the cap there is $35,000,000 That's such a large number, and the increment so far is so incomplete. There's really no way to make a good projection on when that will be paid back. And moving on to the last two.

So the airport URA had no activities completed in 2024. It is sitting there. No. It has not generated any increment, but economic development staff, town of URA staff are continuing to evaluate different proposals and look at the best way to kind of activate the site and start generating some some TIF out there. And then the gateway phase one URA was approved in August.

Construction is underway. But, obviously, with that two year lag, we won't see any increment there. Probably none this year, probably none in 2026, probably won't see anything until 2027. So these ones are just kind of airport. Nothing's you know, nothing has happened yet, so it's got some expenses for consulting and legal and other stuff.

And, hopefully, we will be able to get that site activated, get it developed, and start generating some revenue. And then also the gateway phase one has similar expenses, but we know that the tax increment is coming in. It just hasn't started coming quite yet. Oh, and then finally, you can see on the right the revenues broken down by category and expenses broken down by category for all of these six different URA plan areas with the net fund balance at the bottom. And then that note there, just reiterating what I said, where, I guess, where all of these plan areas, as currently established, we believe the ones with a negative balance, Nine Mile and Gateway in particular, that they are set up in a way that they will pay off the loans that they have accrued The loans from the general fund, they will pay those back in in time.

And then airport, you know, staff are working to to activate it and so that it will, get back into the the black. And then finally, just the board of commissioners page. Just since this is the 2024 annual report, we have the board of commissioners from 2024. Some of you will recognize your face. Some of you won't, but that's why. That's the 2024 board of commissioners. With that, I turn it all over to you for questions and discussion.

Alright. I'll bring you back to the commission. Any questions, comments? Commissioner Baer.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I I'm just always curious about the airport URA. It's just sitting there. Is there any way for us to expand it? Or I mean, is there some way for us to extend the life of it since it's been sitting there for a while?

Sure. So the airport URA, TIFF, in in Colorado is created with a twenty five year life. The airport URA was created in 2015, so naturally, the expiration date is '24. At the time, back in 2015, if you recall, use your time machine, that was when King Soopers was locating on Colorado 7. Now it Sheridan at the time was considering Bonanza.

The town, the property owners were putting certain tools in place to make that project viable, and that included activating TIF on the 60 acre corner at the Northwest Quadrant Of 7 in Bonanza. So if you know where the Maverick gas station Erie Storage, the west side of that same intersection, just South Reed Airport. So that 60 acre tract, which is still owned by, BC Holdings, Blake Carlson, was activated for TIF, but development never occurred. So TIF is ticking. It's ten years in.

There's only fifteen years left. But the only part of the entire airport URA boundary, if you can see this graphic here, only 60 acres right down here on 7, basically just abutting that Highway 7 label is all that was activated for TIF. So that's where the clock is ticking. The rest of the URA boundary, which is the full town owned airport property, all the airpark, the Vista Commons Corner where the actual retail is occurring, is within the plan area boundary, but it's not in the TIF area boundary. So the clock is not ticking for the rest of the airport URA, just the 60 acre Collegiate Holdings smaller track where the Kings was originally thinking about going.

So our strategy is I think of twofold, maybe three. First is utilizing the TIF on that part of the URA that is expiring that does have a ticking point. We are working with the landowner. We're working through potential development options. We've had two pre op meetings looking at potential development options for that property. There is no utilities on that property. At the time in 2015 when the original zoning was being considered, there was an agreement to extend sewer from the airport south of the runway to connect to that property for about a 500 home project. Nothing ever happened. Development didn't occur. Sewer didn't occur.

So there's still a a strong need for utilities in place that since 2015 now cost a lot more. So the URA could be one tool to help extend infrastructure to make something happen there. We're just working with the landowner currently to figure out what that is. That's the first one. The second is to your question of expanding or extending.

This URA was created in 2015. The laws in Colorado drastically changed at the 2015. Beginning 01/01/2016 with House Bill thirteen forty eight, there's a lot more checks and balances now with affected taxing districts that weren't in place ten plus years ago. In order to amend the TIF, in order to expand the TIF, in one order, it requires negotiating with every single taxing district. Going to everybody, the the the town, the school, the fire, the county, the library, and negotiating revenue sharing agreements with every single taxing district for how much they're willing to contribute to make that happen. That's a big hypothetical. Two is that allows each of those taxing districts to reopen whatever they agreed to for the last TIF and renegotiate those terms too.

So it's a

little iffy. We considered it. A lot of the remaining property is residential Erie Airpark, town owned Erie Airport. Doesn't have a lot of potential tax revenue or tax potential there. The third option is expanding the boundary, which you go through the same steps as you would to expand the TIF. So a lot of options, but I think the biggest one is working on how can we capitalize the area that is expiring and is ticking as we speak and finding the right type of development there, working with the landowner on utilities, potentially tapping the TIFF to help with those utilities to make something happen there sooner than later. Does that answer it?

Yeah. Thank you for that very short answer.

I say it's ever short.

And to

I'm sorry.

Commissioner Babs?

I just started thinking.

Yeah. No worries.

And to, commissioner Bears' point, I'm I'm I'm just thinking when we think about what we want here in Erie and the particularly in these areas, I mean, with with teens. I have all teens, I think, now.

Oh my god. Well,

not all. But, you know, something for our young people to do. I mean, going to Buc ee's is great, but that's outside of our area here, way outside. And so we can think about some of those things that we bring in, and the restaurants are nice, but they usually don't have money. They use our money. Having something for our young people to do is something that I think we should be thinking about in our areas more particularly. So that's just something that came to mind when we think about those areas.

Right. And that's, Yeah. Commissioner mister Pesrano? You knocked my point. So

Okay.

Commissioner Abhishek. For the airport area, like, is there any potential tax revenue that could be generated just by expanding, like I'm not sure how much of the airport the town owns, but, like, I know there's a big desire in this area, like, kinda Northern Denver for hangar space. Any has has that been looked at at all?

You guys are picking on one. You are not doing anything.

Because you wanna see it.

Certainly. TIP generates revenue based off property tax increment and sales tax increment. So as development occurs, property values go up. Property taxes go up. We capture that increment. So hangar space certainly generates property val property tax and property value. So it could generate TIF that we could then use to help support those areas. On town owned property, it's tax exempt. So ground lease, private hangars built on town owned property doesn't have any property value, so there's no property tax. If it's privately owned, like, you know, the hangers on the flight business park on Airport Road that are off town property but on airport adjacent, that would certainly generate TIF, but those properties are not in the URA boundary.

So that does not help us. If we expand the area or at some point consider a new area, we could do that. But right now, those areas are not in a TIF area.

What are the kind of I mean, I don't know the details of the TIF agreements we've had for the twenty fifteen URA, but are they favorable so much so that we don't want to try to renegotiate?

Yes.

Good

question. If we okay. Not seeing any other questions. The Crosswind Runway, I think, is obviously a place where maybe we can do some development, maybe hangers. If we sold that land, so it wasn't owned by Erie, then does it come under the TIFF so that we can capture the increment?

It would if it were sold to a private entity and developed for private property value, private property tax, it would, but we would have to activate it for TIF first. Because currently, it's in the part of the plan area that is not activated for TIF. So the same way the the 60 acres on seven was negotiated with the taxing district, signed all these agreements, activated through the county to capture that value, we would have to do that again for the Crosswind area separately. Separately.

And we'd have to open it back up for every and it goes back to your first question. We don't wanna do that. Yes. Alright. Alright. So I'll move away from the airport URA?

Me too.

Okay. Let's go to town center. And the map that has the URA over it. There you go. So I believe we have homes in the URA there. We are getting pushback Boulder County for including homes on the North Side Of Erie Parkway. Help us understand why homes are in this or why they should be, why they shouldn't be.

This URA was also created in 2015 before the laws changed. So there was not nearly as much negotiating agreements between the taxing districts in 2015 as there is today. The laws have changed a lot since then. For the town owned property, there's a large focus on the ag land that meets state statute definition for ag land that we really need Boulder County's involvement approvals to even create a URA for that property. That wasn't required back in 2015. So there is conversation with the county around housing, specifically around affordable housing. Those weren't part of the conversation back then.

So in this particular case, where we do have a URA that includes houses, that tax increment, which is 100% increment, that doesn't come to the town to be used in general fund. It is specifically for the URA. Correct. Yes. And I just want everybody to who's listening out there to realize that none of this is free money. We're basically taking money that would have come to the town to pay for other general fund needs, and it's being used to basically jumpstart business in this particular area.

And I believe, Laki can correct me, I think in this location, it's a 100% of the property tax collected is captured by the URA. Thumbs up. So the the the full mill levy here, which is a 113 mills or so, is what's being captured. The town's portion of that is, like, 13 mills or so. Yeah. So we're we're tapping into other revenue from other taxing districts that agreed to be part of this ten years ago in addition to the town's portion.

Yeah. So that's part of the magic.

Mhmm.

Okay. I don't have any further questions. Thank you for coming out tonight and give us an overview and certainly educating me a little bit more as I fully come up to speed. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay. With that, we are concluding the, Urban Renewal Authority meeting on 05/13/2025, and I will adjourn this meeting. Thank you all.