By: TUCKER MITCHELL
Published: July 22, 2011
A bump on the path to an upscale hotel in downtown Florence?
Maybe.
Florence County Council and Florence City Councils are at odds — slightly, or maybe more —over how to untangle the property planned for the proposed “Hotel Florence” project on West Evans Street from the existing Tax Increment Financing District there.
County council began proceedings Thursday to remove the entire downtown historic district from the TIF.
City council met Friday to approve a $425,000 grant for the developers of the project. While they were doing that, however, questions about the county’s actions arose. The city, which has handled most of the negotiations with the local development group that’s planning to build the hotel and its accompanying restaurant, intended to move just the hotel property itself from the TIF.
The difference between the two approaches is the difference between guaranteeing that future tax money from downtown redevelopment stays downtown or making it available for projects across the county.
The point of removing the hotel project from the TIF is to allow for the creation of a “Multi-County Industrial Park” at the site, which would allow the county to incentivize the development in a way the TIF could not do. But if the entire historic district is removed from the downtown TIF, then the TIF money goes with it. Downtown supporters, like city councilman Steve Powers, worry that if that happens, the downtown area will never see it again.
“In my mind, (taking the entire historic district) is very dangerous,” he said. “Would the county use that money for downtown projects? Why don’t you ask the citizens of the county if that’s what they’d want to do with that money?”
Powers said during city council’s discussion of the matter he is “very much in favor of the (hotel) project,” but said that he “couldn’t support taking the historic district away.”
City officials were hoping at their Friday morning meeting that the county action was just a mistake of sorts. “We could just be making a mountain out of a molehill,” said councilman Buddy Brand.
But county council chairman K.G. “Rusty” Smith said, in an interview later Friday, that’s not the case. County officials initiated action to remove the entire district because they thought it was simpler — and better.
“We’re looking at downtown Florence seeing lots of projects like this in the years ahead,” Smith said. “We don’t want to have to come back and go through this every time. We thought it was better to just get it all done at once.”
When told the county plan was giving some city officials indigestion, Smith said, “Look, the functionality (of taking out a property at a time) just wasn’t good. We think this is the way to do it. It will make everyone’s property values go up and they’ll be able to fix up their own property.”
That said, Smith said he didn’t think the two bodies would have trouble coming to an agreement on the matter.
“I think we’ll work it out,” he said.
To that end, city council voted unanimously to instruct its staff to engage county staff — “or whoever needs to be in the conversation,” said Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela — in a discussion about the plan.
“One of the hardest things to do is make an agreement between two government bodies,” Wukela said, “as you can see.”
City council also on Friday approved a $425,000 grant to the development group to assist them with the purchase of the Evans Street property where the hotel is to be built. The grant, which will be distributed in two parts, will come from the city’s utility reserve fund and depends upon the project purchasing water and sewer services from the city sufficient to match the grant amounts over the next 25 years. If the project does not produce water and sewer revenue equal to the grant, then the developer would have to pay the city the difference, plus a small administrative fee.
Councilman Ed Robinson, who says he supports the project but believes the city does not support black ventures in the city in the same way it does white ventures, voted against the agreement, which passed 5-1. Councilwoman Octavia Williams-Blake was absent.
The project would bring the 53-room “Hotel Florence” to the West Evans Street parcel, along with a 180-seat restaurant. The restuarant is the current Victor’s Bistro, which would move north from its current South Irby Street address to the new location. Victor’s owner Tim Norwood is a member of the development group along with attorney Ben Zeigler, the Raines Hotel Group, architect Randy Key and the Pearce Land Co. LLC.