County leaders question Cayce’s riverfront development tax extension

Some Lexington County Council members are skeptical of Cayce’s bid to extend a redevelopment tax plan to finance more civic improvements.

Complaints about too much lost revenue and too much beautification are emerging as county officials weigh approval of a 20-year extension of the plan.

“The questions aren’t over yet,” Councilman Darrell Hudson of Lexington said after those concerns were aired Tuesday.

An extension of Cayce’s tax increment financing, or TIF, would allow the city to continue using property tax growth through 2037 in a 188-acre area along Knox Abbott Drive near the Congaree River to pay for new projects.

City Hall expects to reap $8.7 million from the extension after using the tax plan to build the Riverwalk and related projects that supporters say make the community a more appealing place to live and work

The trail helped spur $41 million in new homes, apartments, stores and offices, with another $75.9 million in the offing, City Manager Rebecca Vance said.

Taxes from those projects will help the county recover $1.8 million in taxes abated during the past 20 years, she said.

Much of that development would have happened anyway as a commercial area bloomed at 12th Street and I-77, some council members said.

“Those didn’t come because of the TIF,” Councilwoman Erin Long Bergeson of Chapin said.

Other council members want to start immediately gaining revenue instead of waiting anew.

Cayce’s intent to use 20-year-old tax values is “not going to fly,” Hudson said.

The impact of how updated values would affect Cayce’s plan isn’t known, officials said.

Projects the extension would finance include:

· A facelift of Knox Abbott Drive featuring landscaped medians for a mile, estimated at $5.2 million.

· An interpretative center at the 12,000-Year History Park along Congaree Creek, estimated at $2.8 million.

· A new public safety headquarters, estimated at $5 million.

The extension would allow Cayce to add medians on Knox Abbott when the road is torn up soon to install water lines.

Some county leaders scoff at suggestions the medians would help slow traffic.

“It’s beautification any way I look at it,” Hudson said.

This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 6:48 PM with the headline "County leaders question Cayce’s riverfront development tax extension."