Roosevelt Row is one step closer to having its own business improvement district as the Downtown, Aviation, and Redevelopment Subcommittee unanimously recommended on Tuesday that City Council establish the district.
In November, City Council will vote on a resolution of intent, outlining the details of the district before final approval. If the resolution passes, a certified letter will notify all property owners of the upcoming final vote, which will occur in December.
The purpose of the project is to increase services offered to the district, such as quicker graffiti removal, trash removal, which the city doesn’t currently provide, and event management in the hopes of attracting further investment and development.
The idea was first proposed to the city in February. The subcommittee has undergone a feasibility study commissioned by City Council.
Representatives of the project proposed an initial annual budget of $375,000. Private property owners would pay 83 percent through property taxes, and the city would cover the remaining 17 percent.
The assessments range from $31 per year to about $15,000 per year, with the average being about $600 per year, according to Nancy Hormann of urban marketing and management consulting firm Hormann & Associates. According to a City Council report, the district’s boundaries would be Seventh Street on the east, Seventh Avenue on the west, Moreland Street on the north, and Fillmore Street on the south.
Properties would be assessed based on the square footage and type of parcel (commercial, vacant, parking, hotel or residential), with additional increases if the property is along a major roadway. Affordable housing units, single-family homes, and residential parcels with four units or fewer would be excluded from assessment.
Hormann & Associates and Downtown Phoenix Inc., an organization devoted to the revitalization of the downtown area, teamed up to notify community members of the proposal and to ask for input.
According to a City Council report, the groups sent newsletters detailing the project as well as invitations to public forums to all 214 property owners in the proposed district on seven occasions.
Through feedback from a mailed questionnaire as well as direct correspondence, the team determined that 16 percent of property owners expressed a strong positive position, 8 percent expressed a negative position and 26 percent were neutral. The rest of the property owners’ positions were unknown.
“We’re pretty confident that this is something people want, because if they didn’t, they would be very vocal,” Hormann said.
Karen and Erick Baer, a married couple who owns a house with a neighboring vacant lot within the proposed district, said they were not properly notified of the proposed tax increase.
“I’m not questioning their ambitions, or their intentions, but it has to be about process, where everyone gets an opportunity to be notified,” Erick Baer said after leaving the meeting.
The couple said they would face a 25 percent increase in property taxes. They said they saw a postcard inviting property owners to informational workshops, but they thought the workshops were only for business owners, so they did not attend.
Greg Esser, board vice president of the Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation, said the couple was notified of the process, noting a string of emails between them and a consultant who was doing the feasibility study for the business improvement district.
Hormann said that if a property owner did not receive a letter, the letter was returned to her. She said out of the 416 properties within the proposed district, there are five owners who they haven’t been able to reach.
She said the last letter in the chain of mailings sent to every property owner gave specific information on the assessment of each property, and let owners know what they would get for their money and when the next votes on the project would be.
“I don’t know what more we could have done,” she said.
Contact the reporter at Jessica.Swarner@asu.edu.
