Columbus may soon have a five-member redevelopment committee aimed at breathing new life into blighted properties.
During a specially called meeting Tuesday, city councilmen heard a presentation from planning consultant Tripp Muldrow of the South Carolina-based Arnett Muldrow firm. Muldrow discussed the merits of creating a redevelopment district and the implementation of an urban renewal plan.
City planner Christina Berry began working with Muldrow and a stakeholder committee a year ago to identify blighted properties and define a boundary that could be an urban renewal area consisting of vacant and underutilized parcels and property. Berry and the committee found 830 parcels covering 1,296 acres that fell under the criteria.
“I’m hoping our goal is to use this target area to stimulate some type of economic development or private enterprise to come in and develop on the property,” Berry told councilmen. “The state is giving the cities the power of urban renewal. What that says is they can use those powers to acquire property and dispose of property or create an agency to do that on their behalf to help bring this properties into tax generating parcels.”
Muldrow said forming a five-member committee that would act as a conduit to the council but behave like a private corporation could make the city more nimble in redeveloping aging commercial space. The areas identified include a stretch of Hwy. 45, commercial property along Fifth Street, between Second Street and Sixth Street, between 12th Street and 19th Street, North Seventh Avenue, The Island and the Warehouse District.
The committee would be able to acquire and sell property, rehabilitate and improve structures, pursue public-private partnerships, demolish buildings that can’t be rehabilitated, consolidate titles and acquire and distribute funds. Muldrow noted similarities between those priorities and goals outlined in the city’s comprehensive plan.
“The agency can own property. They can sell property. They can buy property, They can participate in public-private partnerships, They can borrow funds. They can obtain grants,” Muldrow said. “They can do a lot of different things with a lot of flexibility.”
Muldrow presented the city’s planning commission with the urban renewal plan Monday. The commission will review the plan and make comments on it over a 30-day period. The plan would then go through a public hearing and the council could approve it by a resolution the day of the hearing. In the meantime, the council can consider who to appoint to the five-member committee, how to capitalize the committee and how to provide land acquisition options for the committee in partnership with the city. Capitalization of the committee could be done by taxable and non-taxable bond issues that can be repaid by private investment in the district.
The foundation for the proposed renewal district was from a design plan conducted several years ago and grew to include the entertainment district councilmen subsequently approved before expanding to include commercial properties on Hwy. 45, such as Leigh Mall, Muldrow said.
“We started with a fairly small area and it grew,” he said. “One of the things we were careful not to do is we didn’t want to go into residential neighborhoods because we start to step into the territory of the housing authority. We also start stepping into the issue of ‘Do we want to be doing things in residential areas?'”
Muldrow said under the urban renewal agency state code, members and an executive director can be hand-picked based on their business acumen by Mayor Robert Smith with advice from the council. The council would select replacement members by votes.
Muldrow said peer cities in Mississippi, including Tupelo, have utilized this tool to help spur redevelopment. Muldrow said revitalization of the Fairpark area there was done its redevelopment agency.
About $12,000 from the planning line item in the city’s budget was already set aside to compensate Muldrow for his services, Berry said.
Retail consulting could cost $88K over three years if approved
On Tuesday, the council also heard a presentation from Lacy Beasley and Charles Branch of Retail Strategies in Alabama. Beasley and Branch proposed the council consider their company to do a marketing analysis of the city and use their research to help recruit retail over a three-year period with an option to renew annually afterward.
Retail Strategies has previous success delivering desired major retailers such as Home Depot, Planet Fitness and Petsense to Tuscaloosa and Sylacauga in Alabama as well as LaGrange, Ga.
The company’s proposal would require $40,000 from the city in its first year of partnering. During that time, Beasley and Branch said the company would conduct a market research, analysis and maximization study as well as a strategic retail recruitment plan and identification of prospects. The company would also represent the city at national and regional real estate conferences. The company would continue to update its research for the next two years at $24,000 a year. The city would have the option after that to renew the contract with Retail Strategies on an annual basis for $24,000 a year.
Councilmen took no action during the meeting on either presentation. Their next scheduled meeting is Jan. 22 at the Columbus Municipal Complex.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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