Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' office on Friday scrapped a planned City Council vote set for Wednesday on the controversial public financing package for downtown Atlanta's $5 billion Gulch project, marking at least the third time a vote has been scuttled since September.
The reversal comes about 24 hours after the council scheduled a special meeting at Bottoms' request to consider new deal terms.
The disjointed process to advance a Gulch deal through council has become a hallmark of negotiations. Council members and the public complained in August that the administration was trying to ram a deal through without enough public input.
A planned vote in September and another earlier this month were shelved for lack of council support for the original proposal, which included up to $1.75 billion in bonds backed by two sources of future tax revenue to be created by the development.
The city and developer CIM Group resumed talks to reach a deal that could win council support and they've been in intense talks for more than a week to finalize terms.
The called vote Wednesday appeared a sign to some observers that Bottoms had gained the eight votes on needed to approve a deal.
But the council and public still don’t know new terms, and it’s unclear when the mayor’s office will present a revised plan. The city had promised to unveil a new agreement on Wednesday, but as of late Friday afternoon, the council had not received it.
Several council members, including Councilman Howard Shook, have demanded time to review final legislation and felt a Wednesday vote was too soon. The council’s next regular meeting is Nov. 5, though there has been discussion at City Hall about a potential called meeting Oct. 29.
“I am one of many council members who have advocated for the next full meeting on the 5th,” said Shook, who represents Buckhead. “That would give us time to read the documents and use the committees for the inevitable questions the documents would produce.”
Councilman Andre Dickens, who holds a citywide seat, applauded Bottoms’ decision to delay a vote.
“I’m glad it’s not being called up that fast,” Dickens said. “There is more work to be done to improve the deal and engage the citizens and business community.”
A spokesman for Bottoms did not answer questions from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about when the new agreement will be released or provide a vote date. Formal announcements, he said, were forthcoming.
The administration had expected outside lawyers to have final Gulch agreements ready for council to review by Wednesday, but that didn’t happen, Marva Lewis, Bottoms’ chief of staff, wrote in a memo Friday to Council President Felicia Moore.
Lewis wrote that Bottoms delayed the Wednesday vote she wanted to give the council time to review the new terms.
CIM has proposed a mix of office towers, apartments, hotels and retail spanning “the Gulch,” 40 acres of railroad tracks and parking lots between Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the Five Points MARTA station.
To make the site feasible for development, CIM has proposed a $500 million platform that would create up to 15 new downtown blocks.
Bottoms and CIM proposed an incentive package in August involving two sources of future tax revenues. One involved bonds supported by five cents of the local 8.9-cent sales tax revenue created in the Gulch area for the next 30 years.
The other involved a controversial extension of a special taxing district by 10 years to 2048.
On Monday, the city and CIM scrapped the 10-year extension to the Westside Tax Allocation District (TAD). Instead, the existing taxing district will help fund the project through 2038, its scheduled sunset date.
CIM has said the company, not the city, is on the hook if future tax revenues don’t pay off the bonds.
The TAD extension had been fiercely opposed by some council members and by Atlanta Public Schools, which also would have had to approve the extension. The school system forgoes tax dollars within the zone to help redevelopment.
The Gulch deal also contains commitments for affordable housing, job training and an economic development fund. But critics say the public benefits of the original proposal weren’t commensurate with the taxpayer support.
The city has declined to disclose other alterations to the deal until a final proposal is released to council.
A 403-page document obtained this week by the AJC showed several proposed changes, including removal of certain community benefits.
For instance, plans to provide city development agency Invest Atlanta 15 years reduced cost rent at a Gulch office building were eliminated, as was a plan for a swap of buildings between the city and CIM.
An AJC analysis of the terms appeared to show the maximum amount of bonds at $1.665 billion, including a nearly $65 million performance bonus from Westside TAD revenues if CIM reaches certain milestones.
But city and CIM representatives said the deal had since changed again and terms within the document the AJC reviewed weren’t final.
Our Reporting
The AJC first reported the city and CIM Group’s talks on a potential 10-figure public financing package for the Gulch project. AJC reporters have also looked at the potential costs and community benefits of the up-to-$5 billion project that could remake a 40-acre downtown site into a mix of offices, retail, hotels and residences. New terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but could be announced in the days ahead.
