Editor's Note: Bill Hollander, a former member of the Louisville Metro Council, delivered this testimony during the Dec. 4, 2023 public hearing for the proposed tax-increment financing district to subsidize the One Park development at Lexington Road and Grinstead Drive.
I’ll begin with a quote.
“If this becomes a TIF issuance, we will agree to the 10%. I don’t know if we are going to get there and I’m not trying to use this as leverage to get a TIF. If the TIF comes in we’ve already conceded the 10%. We’ve already got that issue out of the way.”
Former Louisville Metro Council member Bill Hollander, interviewed in 2020 (WDRB file photo).
That was Bill Bardenwerper, the zoning attorney for One Park at a public hearing attended by hundreds of people and lasting almost six hours on September 30, 2019, speaking about the percentage of affordable units the developer would agree to provide, if it sought tax increment financing. And the number was 10% - “we’ve already got that issue out of the way,” as he put it.
On October 17, 2019, just before the Planning Commission approved the rezoning, a commissioner asked about memorializing that 10% requirement. A Planning staff member said:
“That would be a requirement regardless of what this binding element says so I don’t see the need to add it because it would be required regardless.”
Reassured, the commission member then voted for the rezoning.
When I stated my support for the rezoning at Metro Council, I also noted the affordable housing commitment, which included affordable sale prices in the event the units become condominiums and affordable lease rates for apartments.
After the vote, Mr. Bardenwerper told the Courier-Journal that the affordable housing commitment was a “big deal” – his words - in terms of securing the rezoning for the project.
Last week, the TIF ordinance was filed and it turns out Mayor Greenberg’s administration doesn’t think the affordable housing issue is “out of the way’ at 10%, as the developer had committed to get the rezoning. The discussion about affordable sale prices is completely omitted – if the units become condos not even 7% of them are required to be affordable.
Most importantly, the number of affordable rental units is reduced to 7%, with an option to lower that to 5%, if a very small payment is made to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. That’s below the goal set out on Metro’s own website and far below the promise the developer made to get the property rezoned.
Metro Council should not approve that retreat on affordable housing. Throughout the long process for One Park – more than a dozen neighborhood meetings attended by hundreds of people - I encouraged my constituents to participate in the process and tried to convince them the process was fair - and was a system they could trust.
If the affordable housing component is reduced in this way, a score or more teachers, firefighters, police officers or nurses will lose the opportunity to live in this massively taxpayer funded project. And public trust that developers will be held to their word – that something can be settled and “out of the way” when a developer makes a public pledge - will deteriorate even more.
Mayor Greenberg’s staff has been saying that the reduction in affordable units is justified by increased construction and interest costs. But that dog won’t hunt. The increased costs are reflected in the massive increase in the size of the public subsidy, from $96 million when it was presented to me last year, which I said I wouldn’t sponsor, to $114 million now – an $18 million increase. At the same time, the affordable housing commitment – the thing Mr. Bardenwerper said we had “out of the way” by the developer’s promise - has been reduced by 30% or more.
Many cities have much stricter requirements for affordable units in projects that receive tax incentives. I can’t find any city in the entire country that has said, ‘we’re reducing the requirements for affordable housing because construction and interest costs have risen.’ Louisville would be the first to say developers can’t afford to include the required – in this case, agreed upon - affordable units anymore. That may be the Mayor’s position but Metro Council shouldn’t allow it.
I support this development and voted for the rezoning. But the developer, not the taxpayers, should pay for it. I don’t believe it meets the statutory requirement of developing a blighted area or the “but for” test that no development would happen here if the developer was required to pay its taxes like everyone else. In a town with massive food deserts in our disadvantaged neighborhoods, I also think Metro Council should think long and hard before approving a taxpayer subsidy for a 49,000 square foot grocery store between Crescent Hill and Cherokee Triangle.
But if this TIF is approved, please hold the developer to its modest public commitment that 10% of the residences - sold or leased - will be “affordable”. Metro Council can do that by requiring changes to the agreements, before any TIF is approved. Without those changes, our commitment to affordable housing will be lessened, and public trust in a transparent local government and particularly the development process will deteriorate even further.
