To help fill empty lots with new homes, the city of South Bend plans to start using the same tax incremental financing tool it’s used for decades to help businesses grow.
Tax incremental financing, or TIF districts, capture revenue from new property tax growth in a defined area and use it to develop infrastructure that spurs more growth. Things like streets, curbs and sidewalks, and lighting.
On Thursday the city administration will ask its redevelopment commission to start the process of creating a separate area, a sort of sub-TIF district within the city’s existing River West TIF area, for residential properties in the Lincoln Park and Kennedy Park neighborhoods. The city’s common council would need to also approve it this fall.
Joe Molnar is the city’s assistant director of growth and opportunity. He says the incremental tax revenue will go into a separate fund instead of the city’s general fund, but it will take a few years to accumulate enough money in that fund to do projects.
“It’s a way for us to be able to make sure that as this neighborhood is developed in — especially in the Lincoln Park area, these are the first new homes coming in maybe a century in some cases, on some of these streets — we’re making sure that that new growth also leads to tangible benefits for the existing residents," Molnar said.
Molnar says about half the homes in those neighborhoods were demolished over the past half-century. The city has given incentives for the nonprofit Indianapolis-based developer Intend Indiana to build 92 homes in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, and they’ve started construction on the first 10 homes on Blaine Avenue.
