Perfect storm*

The City has leased land for over two decades which it has used as a park. Area residents bought homes considering the park to be there for their children to access without crossing nearby busy streets.

The lease has expired.

The landowner plans to redevelop a portion of the land for senior housing, a portion of the housing to be 'affordable', and has requested Tax Increment Financing (TIF) for the project. It has offered to sell the undeveloped portion to the City for a price that would consume most of the available Park Fund, which lacks a fund replenishment source since it depends on fees from the sort of new development that is rapidly drying up. Using the Park Fund for this purchase would affect maintenance and improvements throughout the Maplewood park system already planned via the Capitial Improvement Projects (CIP) process.

An alternative funding mechanism is a bonding referendum. This approach would likely not happen until November, would add to the City's debt which is characterized in the agenda for the upcoming council goal setting session as 'staggering', and would ask all residents to accept increased property taxes for a purchase some would view as only benefiting the residents near the park. The idea of a bonding referendum has also surfaced in the south leg context.

After two recent Parks and Recreation Commission meetings at which this proposal has received significant attention, the council will take it up in the workshop format next Monday (packet pdf). Acting City Manager Ahl's staff report suggests TIF may not be the best idea.





Alex Davy's 3/19/08 Lillie Newspapers article 'Golden lease' arrangement ends: Maplewood hopes to buy church-owned parkland provides a good summary:

Since 1982, Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Maplewood has leased 9.6 acres of park land adjacent to its property to the city for $1 a year. The 25-year lease agreement expired in 2006, and now Gethsemane plans to build a senior housing complex on the western six acres of the park. The parks and recreation commission has been offered the chance to buy the remaining 3.6 acres.

"I'm going to be plain, it was a difficult decision," said the Rev. Richard White, church pastor, at the March 13 commission meeting. "But we felt it was the best decision."

Plans have been in the works for years, White says. "It's an act of synergy. We see this as an opportunity to become an intentional multi-generational church community, together with the church, school and now senior housing."

Gethsemane has partnered with Presbyterian Homes of Minnesota to construct 111 units of independent-living senior housing with heated underground parking and a small, above-ground parking lot.

A heavy burden
The park purchase would likely stretch parks and recreation funds to the limit. According to initial estimates, says Environmental Manager DuWayne Konewko, buying the park will cost the city approximately $800,000. About $200,000 could come from profits from the park access charge fund, while the remainder could come from the roughly $1.7 million fund itself. But much of that money is already committed, which means using the park-access charge fund to buy the park would nearly deplete it.

Money in the fund comes from developers and builders in Maplewood, who are charged a parks fee in order to provide green space when they introduce new construction. But with Maplewood 98 percent developed, Konewko says, that revenue stream is drying up.
...

Working though this situation may test the council's ability to function as a body.


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* Wikipedia: "perfect storm...the simultaneous occurrence of events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their chance combination. Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its overall impact." The phrase was popularized in the book and movie of the same name.