RDA bill may hurt pro soccer plans

(by Erin Stewart and Brady Snyder desnews.com 2-10-05)

Plans to use redevelopment agency dollars to secure a site for a Major League Soccer stadium are in serious jeopardy as a state lawmaker looks to rein in city redevelopment agencies across Utah.

And without the RDA dollars needed to make proposals from Salt Lake City and Murray work, soccer stadium plans may need serious revisions.
Salt Lake City RDA executive director Dave Oka said a restriction on using RDA funds to secure a site for a soccer stadium near downtown would make the project "extremely difficult."

Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, plans to introduce a bill in the next few days that would significantly limit city RDAs by prohibiting their use for retail development. Bramble admits he is "stepping on some sacred turf" with his measure, which he said will likely end up in a compromise between city groups that favor RDAs and other groups, like public education, that don't favor diverting property tax dollars for redevelopment.

However, one item Bramble says he won't compromise on is a provision that disallows RDA funds from being used for recreational facilities — including soccer stadiums.

"That would definitely be one of the abuses of RDAs," Bramble said. "I met with the folks that are proposing the soccer stadium, and I suspect that this bill would directly impact their proposal."

With both Murray and Salt Lake actively recruiting the soccer stadium with RDA money, Bramble's bill would all but kill the stadium proposals in their current forms.

"Statewide it's hard to argue, when we are faced with such huge challenges in public education, it's hard to justify . . . redirecting (tax increments) to a recreation facility," Bramble said.

Murray's proposed soccer stadium site is in a yet-to-be created RDA district near 4500 South and State while Salt Lake City's site, Block 22 near Main and 700 South, is in the West Temple Gateway project area. However, Salt Lake City is now considering other sites instead of Block 22 because the cost to purchase the block has skyrocketed to nearly $20 million.

While Oka declined to talk about other sites, the Deseret Morning News, through a Government Records Access and Management Act request, was given a copy of a map that showed the other sites city leaders have contemplated.

SportsWest vice president Dean Howes maintains RDAs were made for projects such as the new soccer stadium, which he argues will infuse jobs and economic development to areas surrounding the stadium. While some aspects of Bramble's effort — like forbidding neighboring cities from using RDA funds to attract a big-box retailer across the border — are good, RDAs should be allowed to do projects like the stadium.

"Him (Bramble) throwing this in is just a way to kind of add fuel to the RDA fire," Howes said. "His fight has more to do with Wal-Mart's being taken from one town and put into another town . . . It's a little frustrating to us."

Oka said the lack of RDA dollars would mean a larger private financial commitment from SportsWest and its backers. Howes said even if Bramble's bill passes, "we will work within the system" to build the stadium. SportsWest is looking for Salt Lake County to put a $30 million stadium bond on the ballot so voters could approve some public funds for the $60 million stadium. Until a soccer-specific stadium is built, Real Salt Lake will play at the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Real Salt Lake owner Dave Checketts plans to decide where to try to build the stadium — in Murray or Salt Lake City — soon.

SB184 could put a halt to tax dollars for much more than the soccer stadium, prohibiting RDA money to be used for any retail projects. That provision has raised an outcry among city leaders who say the bill will be the death blow to RDAs and to city sales tax coffers.

"The way the bill is written, RDA ends. As of May 1, there is no more RDA," said Randy Sant, economic development director for Sandy city.

The bill, Sant added, goes too far in curbing RDA abuses and revokes city government's major economic development tool. Sant and other city leaders who met Wednesday at the League of Cities and Towns said the divisive issue should be worked out in a task force or compromise, instead of in extreme legislation on the Senate floor.

"A more proper way of dealing with this would be to get all the players around the table and talk about it and say let's fix it," Sant said. "Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water."

Tossing legitimate RDA uses in an attempt to reform would mean economic downfall for cities like Midvale where a Sharon Steel Superfund site has been branded as an RDA to help develop the once-toxic site.

Lee King, Midvale city administrator, said without those RDA dollars, the site would likely not have been developed and the city's sales tax revenues would have remained stagnant.

"The choices were to leave it as it was — 265 acres of weed-infested lot — or to find a way to put it back online as a productive site," King said. "This bill sort of eliminates the only tool that we have of addressing these extraordinary causes."

But supporters of the bill like Mike Jerman, vice president of the Utah Taxpayer's Association, say RDA abuse has gone too far in recent years as city leaders compete for retail dollars with RDA offers as bait. That tug-of-war for sales tax has led to an ever-expanding definition of blight to warrant the use of RDA funds.

Jerman and Bramble both argue that such competition pits cities against one another without ever boosting the economy. Instead, sales tax dollars are shifted between cities with the citizens losing out as tax dollars subsidize private retail like Wal-Marts and stadiums.

"A soccer stadium is not economic development. It's entertainment dollars being shifted around," Jerman said. "They're just afraid if they don't do an RDA they'll be left out."

School district leaders and several residents groups for RDA reform are also backing Bramble's bill, while opponents include city leaders and developers. With battle lines clearly drawn, Salt Lake County officials voted Tuesday to remain neutral on the issue.

"You've got RDA folks fighting against this bill and a billion people fighting for it," said County Councilman Randy Horiuchi. "If we hop into the fight, we take valuable partners and rub their faces in it."

Along with Bramble's bill, Sen. John Dougall, R-American Fork, is also backing a measure to allow school districts to opt into an RDA instead of automatically having their share of property taxes diverted to the project. A third bill pushed by Sandy city would have expanded the use of RDAs along transit lines, but Sen. Al Mansell, R-Sandy, pulled his sponsorship last week.