Tucker Webb/The Daily Home
During its regular meeting Monday, the council held a public hearing for and approved a development agreement with Noon Pell City LLC to bring an eight store shopping center while the city will offer the development a two percent tax rebate for either a term of up to 20 years or until the mount of the rebate hits $9.5 million and a rebate of the $2 million purchase cost of the land back to the developer after the shopping center opens. City Attorney John Rea said the agreement is being done through Alabama Constitutional Amendment 772, allowing the city to give tax incentives for development projects meeting a public purpose.
While the agreement and the site plan for the development only mention TJ Maxx and Hobby Lobby, the agreement also list TJ Maxx or Marshalls, Hobby Lobby Five Below, Ross Dress for Less, Old Navy, Rack Room Shoes, America’s Best Contacts and Eyeglasses, pOpshelf, Petsmart, Burlington and Ashley Furniture as pre-approved tenants. Whether any of these businesses plan to join the development has not been officially announced and is currently unclear.
The site plan also lists a total of four outparcels to the development, which also do not have tenants listed. City Manager Brian Muenger said that two of these parcels will have businesses recruited by Noon while the other two will have businesses recruited by local developer Bill Ellison.
Council President Jud Alverson said Noon’s Kevin Jennings and Jamey Flegal are attempting to recruit a nation site down restaurant change to one of their out parcels.
“They feel very confident that once, you know, once tractors and everything else shows up to start pushing dirt that one of those spots for a national sit down restaurant will fill up really soon,” he said.
St. Clair County Economic Development Council Director Don Smith said the infrastructure of the project will be paid for with a $6.25 million bond issued against an improvement district set up around the development. He said this bond will not affect Pell City’s debt in any way and will be paid off by a one percent district fee collected inside the district but not city wide. Smith said this fee will functionally appear to be an extra one percent sales tax.
The EDC director said the tax incentive will come out of the five percent in sales tax levied by the city separate from the four percent state sales tax and the one percent county sales tax. Muenger said it is explicitly stated in the agreement that this rebate cannot come out of the one percent levied for Pell City Schools however.
Smith said the rebate is being done by performance based retail rebate, which has been used in other development projects around Pell City.
“This is a structure that we’ve used at the movie theater, the two car dealerships, the renovations at the all K-Mart retail center, so it’s something that is used often and has very little risk to the community,” he said.
Smith said the $2 million cash rebate the agreement says the city will give to the developer after 100,000 square feet of the center opens also counts towards the $9.5 million cap bringing the term of the rebate down from 20 years to less than 10 years.
He said overall the development is expected to raise $21 million for the city over 20 years or an average of $1 million each year. Smith said the development will also generate $11 million in sales tax for Pell City Schools over 20 years and create 200 to 250 jobs.
The old hospital site has been sitting unused since 2011 when the new St. Vincent’s St. Clair was built on Veterans Parkway. At the time the St. Clair County Commission and Pell City partnered to take out a $4 million loan to help fund the new construction in exchange for joint ownership of the property with plans for possible development.the city and county have since worked with Ellison, the local developer that brought both Walmart and Publix to Pell City, to recruit retail to the property.
Muenger told the St. Clair Times in 2020 that the city had been close to making a deal when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and caused a chilling effect to retail development nationwide.
More recently the city and county agreed in October for Pell City to pay its half of the principle of that loan in exchange for taking full ownership of the property with the city’s stated desire to use it for development.
Alverson said all and all the council, Rea, Muenger and Pell City Mayor Bill Pruitt have been working on bringing this development to the city for over three years and during a pandemic that has lasted two years.
“Ultimately, as I said earlier, the city attorney, the city manager, Bill, this council, we didn’t let go of it,” he said, “and to the credit of Bill Ellison, Don and those two gentlemen from Noon, they didn’t let go of it either. Lines of communication stayed open and we finally got to a place where we could get a deal made and here we are in December.”
Alverson said he is specifically glad to have the possibility of a sit down restaurant as part of the plan for the development.
In other matters, the council:
— Held a public hearing concerning weed abatement cost for property on Sixth Avenue North, no one spoke and the cost was approved;
— Held a public hearing to declare properties on Woodhaven Way, two properties Wolf Creek Road and Sixth Avenue North, a neighbor of the Woodhaven Way property spoke in favor of declaring the property a nuisance citing possible snake or rodent issues arising from the tall grass. The council approved resolution naming all four properties nuisances;
— Approved an agreement with Pyro Shows for a firework show at Lakeside Park on July 4, 2022 for the cost of $23,000. The price is an increase of $5,000 from previous years which Pyro Shows saaid was because of higher material costs;
— Approved a resolution approved the disposal of warning sirens located within Pell City;
— Approved grant application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. The grant would purchase wireless radio headsets for fire crews at a cost of $29,971.70 with the city being required if granted to pay a five percent match of $1,498.59; and
— Approved a resolution amending the current business license ordinance.
By Taylor Mitchell, Daily Home Staff Writer
Original article: https://www.annistonstar.com/the_st_clair_times/stclair_news/pell-city-council-approved-new-retail-development/article_935cac12-5c98-11ec-bb79-b7c6a7375068.html
