Members of the city’s Redevelopment Commission are looking to their counterparts in Franklin for guidance on how to encourage the construction of more mid-range homes.
The RDC met in special session Wednesday evening to, in part, consider a kind of scoring card used by the Redevelopment Commission in Franklin to decide how best to support developers looking to build new houses.
The local RDC has, for months, discussed ways to encourage local developers to build mid-range houses — ones anywhere from $140,000 to $200,000 — and they’re ready to finalize their process.
“We know that there are developers out there right now who are ready to put in sub-divisions,” said RDC president Tim Smith, adding that those locations are within the Tax Increment Finance Zone, the vehicle by which the RDC collects property tax revenue to spend on improvements.
“Should we tell them to come make a proposal? Because they want to appear before the RDC sooner rather than later,” he said. “These are the things we need to decide.”
Smith last month announced that he’d begun working on a Request for Proposals with city attorney Dave Roellgen, a document that could be sent out to area developers to garner information on what kinds of housing projects they want to do and how best the RDC could help.
Smith has said he envisions an application process — one designated over a period of weeks or even months — where, at the end, the RDC could consider each one and award funds appropriately.
Developers could be looking to build homes on empty lots throughout town or even renovate old ones in the city’s Historic District.
The process works by incentivizing developers. That could mean giving them one of the 14 empty lots the RDC has collected over the years as the city has looked to reduce blight or funding sanitary sewer connections or even storm water drainage. It could also include street repair or construction.
It’s possible, RDC members decided Wednesday, that they could take this on in phases, with the construction of subdivisions — since there are developers already waiting in the wings to do that — as Phase I.
Phase II could be finding developers to take on the construction of homes on the RDC’s empty lots and the third could be in awarding actual funds or loans to homeowners looking to fix up their older homes.
But to make it fair, they need a score card, one much like Franklin’s.
But there things that local RDC members didn’t like about Franklin’s score card; Marc McNeece, for instance, took issue with a couple of what he called “negative modifiers,” or instances where applicants were docked points based on their plan.
Franklin, for example, takes away points for the construction of duplexes.
“To me, a duplex is not necessarily a negative,” McNeece said. “Especially if they’re going to live in one half, rent the other.
“I’m not sure we want to discourage that kind of living.”
McNeece, too, thought Franklin’s requirement that construction be completed in nine months a bit too tight.
“But I also like that it’s a simple process, one sheet,” he said. “And it would allow builders to understand exactly what we’re looking for when building new homes.”
Franklin’s score sheet, too, takes into account whether or not the homes will be rented or sold, who will manage the property, as well as a developer’s overall experience in building homes, among other criteria.
RDC members decided they would each take time to review that score sheet and send suggested changes to Smith. They will then review their own potential score sheet when they meet again later this month.
Smith, too, said he plans to speak to their financial advisors, Reedy Financial Group in Seymour, on setting aside $500,000 for this first round.
“We can have them put that into our fiscal plan, see how it works out,” Smith said of the RDC’s projected cashflow. “And I feel like if we do those two things, we would really be moving things along.
“I would like to see us approve something at the next meeting, decide when this window is going to be so we know.”
It’s likely, however, that the RDC’s first applicants will be two developers looking to build as many as eight to a dozen homes within the TIF zone, Smith indicated.
But once the RDC hears from them — and perhaps helps them with the cost of infrastructure — there could be more that come forward. Hence, Smith said, the need for a score sheet.
“Because what if contractor A comes in and makes a proposal then contractor B and C come, too?” he asked. “If we don’t have criteria, how are we going to tell them no?”
The RDC is likely, in this first phase, to help these developers with the cost of road construction or even the connection of utilities.
Should they pursue a second phase, it could be construction of new homes on the 14 lots the RDC currently owns.
Mayor Joe Yochum said the incentive there could merely be giving those lots away to people looking to build.
“The infrastructure is already there,” he said. “So the incentive could be just that you get the lot.”
McNeece said he, for one, looked forward to a possible Phase III, one where, perhaps, the RDC could offer reimbursement or even forgivable loans to those who want to take on the renovation of existing homes.
A resident of the city’s Historic District, there is ample stock, he pointed out. And it would preserve the integrity of Indiana’s oldest city.
“I live in an area that is in desperate need of renovation,” he said of old town Vincennes. “and I see that as pretty important, that we’re able to include that in anything we do.
“If we had a construction company that was willing to take on five or six of those at a time, I don’t know why we wouldn’t support that as well.”
The RDC next meets at 9 a.m. Sept. 17 at City Hall, 201 Vigo St.
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