Submitted By: Gus Gianikas
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Presentation By: Aubrey Hale
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Department: Growth Management
STAFF RECOMMENDATION (Motion Ready):
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Approve a new construction grant program for the Community Redevelopment Areas
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OCALA'S RELEVANT STRATEGIC GOALS:
Economic Hub, Quality of Place
PROOF OF PUBLICATION:
N/A
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BACKGROUND: The four Community Redevelopment Area (CRA) subareas have provided commercial building improvement grants to existing buildings for several years, beginning with the Downtown CRA in 2013. The four CRA subareas have issued 82 grants totaling $773,815 for improvements to existing buildings between fiscal years 2019 - 2022. The success of this program in renovating existing buildings has led to greater tax revenue generated throughout the four CRA subareas. It is time to transition into encouraging and providing incentives for new construction, which will further add to tax revenue generation.
The new construction grant is intended to support projects within the CRA subareas that have the potential for catalytic impact within the subarea. This grant will allow new construction and major redevelopment to occur and will apply to the many facets of development. The grant program will partially replace the redevelopment agreement process that has been used to incentivize new construction and catalytic-type projects in the downtown area. The redevelopment agreement process has, at times, proven to be cumbersome due to changes in the construction industry. Covid-19 has had significant impacts on the supply chain and labor market.
This new grant program aims to produce similar results as the redevelopment agreement process and existing structures grants; however, in a more streamlined manner. The grant will be flexible in how the money is disbursed to the applicants with options for disbursement over the course of up to three consecutive years. The grant will include detailed scoring conducted by the CRA Advisory Board ...
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