The Portage Redevelopment Commission agreed to a timeline Thursday for creating five residential tax increment financing districts for new subdivisions.
The program would apply to the Bauer Farm, Sandy Trails, Farmington, River Trace and Swanson Trails developments.
The City Council has virtually assured that the residential TIF program, a first for Portage, will be created this year. The council approved raises for police officers to be funded by revenue generated by residential TIF districts.
“I’ve received a couple of calls and comments” and have made revisions, Redevelopment Director Dan Botich said.
The River Trace and Swanson Trails paperwork will be finalized by Tuesday, he told the RDC, and Providence at Farmington subdivision on the old Carlson farm isn’t far behind.
On Sept. 8, the paperwork will be available on the city’s website for the public, Portage Township assessor and the developers, Botich said. That officially starts a 30-day period for public comment. Just search online for “Portage Indiana Redevelopment Commission,” Botich said, to find the appropriate section of the city’s website for that information.
A special RDC meeting will be held Oct. 9 for a public hearing, followed by a special meeting of the Plan Commission. The City Council will meet Oct. 14.
Then, on Nov. 6, the RDC will meet to give the plan final approval.
“I think this is such a big program,” Mayor Austin Bonta said, adding it makes sense to deal with it at a separate meeting instead of lumping it in with regular business.
Bonta suggested the RDC plan a session on how taxes work because municipal finance is so confusing. He’s often asked about “what I pay in taxes, where is this money going?” Understanding which tax pays for what would be helpful, he said.
At the intersection of Airport Road and U.S. 6, the developer is seeking TIF funding and economic development bonds to help pay for improvements. The developments are on the southeast and southwest sides of the intersection.
The economic development bonds would be purchased by the developer at no cost to the city. The bonds would include paying for Botich and consultant Karl Cender’s efforts on what Botich has deemed Project Runway Southeast and Project Runway Southwest.
Botich said he hadn’t heard of the Project Runway TV show, so the fashionable name was just a pun he created based on the Airport Road location.
On the city’s north side, the RDC authorized investigating whether two outlots near Ind. 249 could be developed. They were originally considered too wet to develop, but that was before the Portage Marina basin was dug decades ago, so the flood plain maps are outdated.
“We have had several people ask about these lots, and they are pretty valuable,” consultant Bill Rathjen said.
They’re part of a planned unit development, so the city would have to change the PUD paperwork to allow for the lots to be developed.
First, though, the RDC has to determine whether the lots are usable. They were originally set aside for conservation, open space and drainage easements, perhaps for a potential detention pond. Evaluating the environmental issues there will require engineering work.
RDC attorney Scott McClure put it in context. “We have an older planned development. We have an older set of flood plain maps that were used at that time but lots of things have changed,” he said.
Bonta hopes they will be able to be developed. “Think about how many people travel over I-94,” he said, bringing potential traffic to the two sites.
“Sometimes the best locations by geography are not the best locations by geography, water and all that,” he acknowledged, but the construction of the Portage Marina more than a quarter of a century ago made a big difference in draining that area.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
