DevelopOhio

As developers plan restaurants, shops, a hotel and more for Cleveland’s downtown lakefront, the city is considering a financing tool to help pay for the infrastructure needed to support that new development, Cleveland.com reports. An early estimate by Cleveland’s economic-development department shows that tax-increment financing (TIF) “could generate up to $9 million up-front for infrastructure and green spaces,” according to the article. The city “is proposing 30-year TIFs that would set aside 39 percent of property-tax revenues — the rest of the money flows to public schools — created by private lakefront development to cover basic site work and greenery.” Those revenues would be used to make payments on “bonds issued to fund the site work”; “[n]one of the TIF revenues would go toward private buildings or parking structures,” the article reports. Cleveland’s economic-development director, Tracey Nichols, called this means of financing infrastructure for new development in areas without existing utilities “a common practice,” saying, “using TIFs is just one of the ways to finance utilities for a new development.” For more, read the full article.