(Seguin) — The third time might be the charm for a proposal to build an apartment complex at the corner of State Highway 46 and Cordova Road. The Lily Springs Apartment Complex was voted down by a 4 to 3 margin during a council meeting in December, but the item is back on tonight’s city council agenda. The item is again on the agenda after city staff and the developer reworked the deal an attempt to garner more support from the council and from the community.
The project created a firestorm when it was first announced a couple of years ago. It was controversial to some because it would have been owned by the city of Seguin, but managed by a private firm, which would have been responsible for all of the financial risks involved in the project. In lieu of property taxes, the company would have made lease payments to the city for 75 years. That was a major cause of concern for the Navarro ISD, because the district would not have been able to collect any property taxes on a property that could have potentially housed dozens of students. The city reworked some of the revenue sharing, and agreed to give the school district two-thirds of the lease payments that it would receive over that 75 year period. That change, plus a new local developer still weren’t enough to change the mind of the majority of the council last month.
However, City Manager Steve Parker says they may have found a way to provide even more revenue for the Navarro ISD, and also allow the project to go back onto the tax rolls sooner than 75 years.
Parker says the developer John Kirk, of Lightpath Corporation, is open to an opt-out clause that would allow the property to taxed after 50 years, instead of the 75 year abatement in the original agreement. The city is also agreeing to share more of the upfront proceeds with the Navarro ISD.
The issue is also coming back, because there’s a concern that if the deal doesn’t get done with the local entities, then an outside governmental body might come in and try to work with another developer on the project. If that happened, it would not only prevent local officials from collecting any tax revenue, but it would also cut out the proposed lease payments in the current agreement, and it would remove the local controls that the city would have as the owner of the project. Some members of the council said they shouldn’t be frightened into this decision, but there have been some cases around the state where that scenario has played out. The council tonight will ulitimately decide the deal’s fate tonight.
In other business, the council is slated to hire Sullivan Contracting Services to complete some site work in Central Park. The city installing new public restrooms in the downtown park. However, the site prep work needs to be done first, before the building can be installed.
The council meets at 5:30 p.m. today at Seguin City Hall.