Town Center owners outline plans for mall
The owners of Town Center mall still plan on asking for assistance for updating the old Fort Henry Mall. If one reads the newspaper article Town Center owners outline plans for mall, it gives the impression that incentives are the norm and given nationwide. It appears that Jeff Fleming (Assistant City Manager) is trying to justify the incentive package for a property that is not in a blighted area.
Somera Capital Management of Santa Barbara, CA purchased the property for $52.65 million and plans to spend $45 million to upgrade the mall. The mall property is appraised at $28,401.00 per Sullivan County tax records. Jeff Fleming stated, “It’s like a home built in 1975, and they’re updating it to 2008 standards. If this be the case then why is the city considering incentives when I am sure that there are many local business owners, that would like to update their old property to today standards.
It appears that Kingsport is quick to consider incentives, whereas Bristol has only used TIF incentives two times
When the Fort Henry Mall was for sale, the Empire of Kingsport should have purchased it. All of Kingsport offices could have been under one roof at the mall. The police department is out of room and needs to expand and the higher education center would not be needed to be built. Instead of the Empire of Kingsport owning a good portion of downtown, it could be then used by private enterprise firms.
Quite simply, Kingsport needs to get to the root of the problem why firms need incentives to do business in Kingsport. Could it be high tax rates?
See my earlier posts