Jenna Colley and Jonathan Selden of the Houston Business Journal report on Mayor White and his Council bending over backwards and doing handflips in order to secure the new Houston Pavilions development:
Months of negotiations ended last week as Houston City Council and Mayor Bill White tweaked the rules to provide a tax break for a major downtown development.
The action removed a roadblock to construction of Houston Pavilions, a $200 million mixed-use project planned by the team of Houston developer Geoff Jones and William Denton of California-based Entertainment Development Group.
The developers lobbied long and hard for financial incentives from the public sector to get Houston Pavilions off the ground.
The package approved on Sept. 14 fulfills their requests.
Terms call for an expansion of the Main Street/Market Square Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ), which currently encompasses a 65-block area. The 10-year-old TIRZ will be stretched another two blocks to include the proposed Houston Pavilions site.
City officials also will give the developers an $8.8 million development grant to fund infrastructure improvements around the project bordered by Main, Polk, Dallas and Caroline streets. Harris County will kick in another $4.4 million.
In return, a unique financial arrangement will provide a faster public payback than the typical TIRZ.
Mayor White was instrumental in hammering out details of the deal, an apparent departure from his usual policy toward TIRZs.
In recent months, a skeptical White has made greater financial scrutiny of all 22 city TIRZs a hot-button issue.
At the behest of the mayor, City Council is currently debating whether to disband the Hardy Street TIRZ for failing to meet financial obligations.
So while one TIRZ faces possible extinction, another is being expanded with input from White.
After agreeing to an interview on the issue, the mayor canceled, citing time constraints created by the Hurricane Rita emergency.
The mayor obviously has been busy micromanaging the Rita emergency, but if there was time to ramrod this sweetheart deal through Council, the mayor really needs to find time to answer questions about it from the press and public.
PREVIOUSLY: New TIRZ approved for downtown Pavilions development.
