An artist’s rendering shows an apartment building planned as part of a development in the City’s Poppleton neighborhood.
A $58.3 million tax increment financing plan for a West Baltimore Poppleton apartment and retail complex moved further through city government Wednesday, with the Board of Estimates signing off on a trio of ordinances to establish it.
Now that it’s passed the city spending panel, the TIF goes back to City Council for consideration. It’s set to be debated June 15, said Lester Davis, spokesman for council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young.
The TIF would use city-backed bonds to pay for infrastructure improvements around the massive project, planned to eventually span 1,600 apartments and 150,000 square feet of retail space. Those bonds would then be repaid with tax revenue from the buildings.
The development was planned as a four-phase, $458 million housing development in the Poppleton neighborhood just west of the University of Maryland BioPark. While its New York-based developer, La Cité Development, has said it wanted to start building the first phase of the project by the end of 2015, all construction phases aren’t planned for completion until 2030 at the earliest. The first phase was planned to total 257 apartments and 19,000 square feet of retail space at a cost of about $72.8 million. It was set to make use of $8.5 million in TIF money.
Several city officials have raised questions in the past over the project. In April, city finance board chairman Larry I. Silverstein questioned the combination of the project’s scale and developer’s experience. More recently, City Councilman Carl Stokes said he would rather to pay for the project’s infrastructure through Baltimore’s capital budget instead of debt.
If the ordinances establishing the TIF pass City Council June 15, they will go to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for approval. She spoke in favor of the TIF arrangement Wednesday.