City Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to expand the boundaries of the Gateway Commons Development Area.
This ordinance will expand the boundary to include additional public infrastructure, and a Master Development Plan will split the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) revenues between three entities.
Now, the developer will receive 65%, Owensboro Regional Water Resource Agency (RWRA) 22% and the City of Owensboro 13%.
City Manager Nate Pagan called the MDA a “fair and equitable sharing of revenue” to which all involved parties agreed.
The Gateway Commons Development Area was previously amended to include TownePlace Suites.
Mayor Tom Watson described the City of Owensboro as “starved for land” before voting alongside commissioners in approval of the ordinance.
Watson said with the Ohio River to the north and the southern edge of the City blighted by flooding, this expansion of the city’s boundaries would be beneficial in a number of ways.
“This allows the City to annex another 44.74 acres, and it allows Fairview Drive to connect with the relocation of Daviess County Middle School,” he said. “In doing that, we also allowed Owensboro Grain — one of our great, corporate citizens — to buy the old middle school site for future expansion.
“It also allowed the OMU service boundary to grow because we’re so landlocked by Kenergy, it adds customers [to OMU], which is really important to the City’s general fund and our dividend.”
Commissioner Larry Conder, who expressed concern about the relocation of properties from other parts of the city to the Gateway Commons Development Area, also approved the ordinance. His concern was regarding the lack of development in other areas, such as West Parrish Avenue and south Frederica Street.
Conder called Gateway Commons a “great project” that the entire community should want to see succeed, saying, “None of us should want to see this developer or anyone else fail.”
Still, he said the City and community needed to keep their eyes on what was happening in other areas that hadn’t seen as much development in recent years.
To date, the Gateway Commons Development Area has added more than $57 million to the tax rolls, Watson said. As for tenants who’d relocated from other parts of the City to Gateway Commons, he said higher property taxes paid and more square footage was a benefit for both the business and the City of Owensboro.
“We don’t have a whole lot of different developers trying to beat our door down to try and show some progress,” he said. “It’s a worthwhile project, and I think we ought to be happy to grow our footprint.”
Commissioner Pam Smith-Wright agreed, adding that the City would welcome any developers interested in revamping other areas of the City.
