Downtown proposal tests Dyer's vow on Parramore

» February 18,2005 - Orlando

Four months after Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer swore off new tax incentives for big developers downtown, a proposal headed to the City Council would provide a $3.7 million break for a project that will benefit the exclusive University Club.

The proposed incentive package from the Dyer administration would divert property taxes paid on the club's prime location from city coffers t the developers building the project, said City Commissioner Phil Diamond, who said he is against the idea.

The money, in the form of tax-increment rebates, would be given back to developers during a period of 12 years for the planned 325-unit luxury condominiums in a twin-tower high-rise. The towers will be connected by a sky-bridge that will house the famed club established in 1926.

Frank Billingsley, the executive director of the Downtown Development Board, where the proposal originated, said that it is only in the form of a memorandum of understanding going before the City Council on Monday. It's like a nonbinding agreement that sets the framework for the city and the developers, Broad Street Partners UC of Charleston,
S.C., and Winter Park.

Dyer was not available for comment thursday evening. He declared in late October that a proposed $3.7 million in incentives for a new grocery store downtown would be the last unless developers came forward to build in the city's poorest neighborhood.

Dyer said at the time: "If anyone is looking for more public aid], they need to talk about developing in Parramore."

Diamond had no objections to the $175 million University Club project itself, but he doesn't want the tax rolls reduced by millions of dollars. Diamond thinks the developers would build there whether or not the city paid incentives.

"I'm skeptical about the need for this [incentive package]," he said. "It's a good project, but the downtown market is red-hot. I'd like to see this money spent to improve parking, transportation and stimulate the Parramore area."

The Parramore neighborhood is the city's poorest and most troubled area. Dyer has pledged that he wants his tenure
as mayor judged on whether or not he successfully rejuvenates the predominantly black neighborhood named after a captain in the Confederate Army.

Gerald Bell, the immediate past-president of the Orange County NAACP, said that he objects to any more incentives being handed out by the city, unless it helps Parramore.

Some improvements have been made in Parramore, including the new $59 million headquarters of Hughes Supply Inc. - which benefited from $l2.8million in incentives. But Bell said Parramore residents have yet to benefit directly.

"Nothing's been done for the people who live there," he said. "They've got nothing."

Neither Bell nor Derrick Wallace, the current local president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had issue with the University Club's past of excluding blacks and women from membership. The club admitted its first black and first female members in 1992.

City commissioners Daisy Lynum and Ernest Page, who are black, said Thursday that they favor the University Club project and the tax incentives.

"It's not a give-away," Page said. "It'll kick off an economic boom."

Stephen J. Walsh, managing partner of Broad Street Partners,
said that the company hasn't sought any cash incentives or loans like other big downtown developers got - including
the $22 million in incentives given to Cameron Kuhn for the Premier Trade Plaza.

The details of the project and what incentives the builders will ultimately seek are not final, Billingsley said.

But he said that incentives have long been part of the strategy to redevelop downtown. The University Club project will bring more residents downtown, which will ultimately spur more retail shops to locate, Billingsley said.

"Retailers go where the rooftops are," he said.

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