Sweeping redevelopment plan on tap for part of Macon

A major redevelopment plan, encompassing 20 percent of Macon and meant to tie other revitalization efforts together, is headed to the city’s Community Resources and Development Committee on Tuesday.

Once there, however, action may be postponed due to last-minute confusion over whether a required public hearing has already been held. If it has been held, there’s questions of whether it was sufficiently advertised, said Councilman Larry Schlesinger, committee chairman.

“Somebody said there was a public hearing today,” he said Monday. “I’m just a little unclear on what that was about.”

City Council Clerk Joyce Humphrey said the city’s Economic and Community Development Department reserved council chambers for a Monday hearing, but council members said they were uncertain whether one was actually held.

The draft plan itself, 47 pages long, summarizes Macon’s economic woes and presents a comprehensive but targeted effort to boost the most troubled areas citywide.

“The urban redevelopment plan, I would say, is the master global plan,” Mayor Robert Reichert has said.

Focusing on the business districts downtown, along Eisenhower Parkway and Pio Nono Avenue, and adjacent residential areas such as Fort Hill and Unionville, the plan would enable a range of tax incentives to draw new business and calls for tougher enforcement to clean up dilapidated housing.

“That’s because it’s going to take bold, decisive action to turn our community around,” Reichert said.

A year in the making and completed last month, the plan is the work of the Macon-Bibb County Planning & Zoning Commission, with help from the Economic and Community Development Department, the Middle Georgia Regional Commission and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Using the federal standard for “pervasive poverty,” 85 percent of Macon could qualify as a redevelopment area under Georgia’s Urban Redevelopment Act, the plan’s authors found. That’s too much to be manageable, so the proposed redevelopment area focuses on three declining commercial areas and a few neighborhoods with the most code violations and abandoned houses. That still covers 20 percent of the city, or 7,349 acres scattered through all of the City Council wards.

A survey found that business license issuance had plunged along Eisenhower Parkway, Pio Nono Avenue and downtown. Meanwhile, the most property code violations were found along Houston Avenue near Hightower Road, and the heaviest concentration of condemned houses is in the Fort Hill neighborhood.

“All that paints a pretty stark picture that you need to take aggressive action,” Reichert said.

What it does

The main point of the plan is to create enterprise and opportunity zones, offering business incentives, particularly along the Eisenhower corridor and downtown.

Tax incentives would encourage re-occupation of locations such as the Westgate Shopping Center at the corner of Eisenhower and Pio Nono, which lost many of its businesses soon after Home Depot departed, said Wanzina Jackson, director of the city’s Economic and Community Development Department.

Tax credits would be the main encouragement for redevelopment, though the city may pursue state or federal grants to offer money for other incentives, she said.

“Enterprise zones,” available since 1997, allow abatement of local property tax and business fees for up to 10 years. To get those incentives, companies have to make a substantial investment inside a zone and employ more than five people, according to the plan. Enterprise zones must focus on areas that have decaying housing and declining business.

“Opportunity zones,” around since 2004, promote job creation by giving a state tax credit of up to $3,500 for new jobs at “all businesses of any nature.” That credit can last for 10 years.

The incentives would apply whether jobs were newly created or moved in from outside the zones, Jackson said.

The plan offers less leverage for improving the neighborhoods around depressed commercial areas. Increased police presence and code enforcement are what’s proposed for those, though the city may eventually partner with nonprofit agencies to target dilapidated houses for clearance and redevelopment, Jackson said.

“At this point there are not any specific incentives with regards to actual neighborhood development,” she said.

“One of the more controversial” ideas mentioned in discussions with the council is a “blight tax,” a special levy on rundown properties, Reichert said. While the main intention of a blight tax would be to push property owners into fixing things up, the money it generated could be used to pay for extra police work and more code enforcement, he said.

There are other ideas floating around to pay for some of the plan’s provisions, Reichert said, but his strategy is to get the plan in place first, then see what funding options its provisions make possible.

Reichert said he hopes a loan program for people trying to fix up houses in the designated areas can be operated through the ECCD. Macon, entitled to an annual share of federal Community Development Block Grant money, could direct some of that money to the loan program, he said. Establishing the redevelopment area might also make some state Department of Community Affairs money available for neighborhoods, he said.

“I think it opens up other avenues of lending, and of course, lending is a huge impediment to us right now, whether it’s commercial or residential,” Reichert said.

As for direct action from the city, the plan says the ECCD can declare drug houses, and filthy or unsafe buildings to be “nuisances” and tag them for demolition. But for now, the city doesn’t expect to displace anyone.

“The city of Macon has no plans to acquire property as a part of this plan. However, the city reserves the right to acquire properties through eminent domain if necessary,” the plan states.

Where it’s from

Impetus for the plan came from discussions in Macon City Council committees about what redevelopment tools are available, said Laura Mathis, director of public administration at the Middle Georgia Regional Commission.

City officials were looking for some way to rebuild the areas from which businesses have migrated to the north side of town, she said.

“Our original discussions sort of stemmed out of some concerns raised by council, really concerned about things like the Eisenhower corridor,” Mathis said.

Other Middle Georgia cities have established similar redevelopment areas or are doing so now, Jackson said.

Census data for 2000 formed the basis of the analysis because it was the most recent available when work began on the plan, but more recent local information about code violations and business licenses has been added, Jackson said.

“We have looked at some of the other data to try to get an overview of where we are versus what the census data is,” Jackson said.

The regional commission has done about a dozen redevelopment plans since 2007 based on the Urban Redevelopment Act, including plans for Warner Robins, Eatonton, Hawkinsville and Perry, Mathis said. Most of them have been implemented. All were driven by local governments, and all were “pretty different,” based on local priorities, she said.

Based on that experience, the regional commission helped authors of the Macon plan narrow the huge eligible area into “something manageable,” from which measurable results can be gleaned, Mathis said.

Macon already has a number of redevelopment efforts under way for smaller target areas, some of which lie within the bounds of the proposed Urban Redevelopment Area: the Urban Main Street Program, Macon Connections, the College Hill Corridor, Macon Housing Authority, Atlantic Cotton Mills, three recently-created tax allocation districts and Community Development Block Grant target areas.

Those are “complementary” efforts, working within and subordinate to this plan, Reichert said.

Where it’s going

So far, the plan is officially a draft document. But Reichert’s administration plans to move quickly. A resolution to adopt the area and associated plan is on the council’s Community Resources and Development Committee agenda Tuesday.

“We hope to have a council vote on it this month,” Reichert said.

Once council members clarify whether a public hearing has been held, or still needs to be, the administration is likely to push for a speedy final vote. Reichert, fresh off successful creation of the tax allocation districts in December, said he hopes to see the urban redevelopment plan win final approval within 60 days.

To contact writer Jim Gaines, call 744-4489.

This story was originally published February 15, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Sweeping redevelopment plan on tap for part of Macon."