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REQUEST FOR HRA ACTION Date: 2-27-15 Item No: 9a. Staff Approval: Agenda Section: Action Item Description: Dale Street Fire Station Site Redevelopment (HF_0117) 1 2 1.0 Requested Action 3 Offer a motion to authorize HRA staff and the HRA attorney to explore the correct legal 4 process, begin negotiations with the City and prepare the required documents necessary to 5 sell the HRA owned parcels to the City Council. 6 7 2.0 Background 8 Prior to December 31, 2014, the City Council and the RHRA had a Memorandum of 9 Understanding (MOU) in place that positioned the RHRA as the lead body in the 10 negotiations, review and approval of the Dale Street Fire Station project development 11 agreement. That MOU has expired. Since that time, the project has been attempting to 12 move forward with parallel approvals from both the RHRA and the City Council which 13 has resulted in a lot of back and forth meetings between the two bodies. 14 15 The MOU anticipated that ultimately, the City Council would be funding all the land 16 purchase via the City Councils Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds. The MOU 17 anticipated this would occur through simultaneous closings so that the TIF funds would 18 flow through the developer to the RHRA. 19 20 At the February 23, 2015 City Council meeting, the City Council discussed the 21 operational difficulties related to the past couple of months in regards to negotiating, 22 review and approvals in this parallel process. The City Council expressed appreciation to 23 the RHRA for all of its efforts to get the deal to this point, and particularly with leading 24 the neighborhood input process. However, the City Council felt that it might be better 25 structured to handle the frequent and sometimes unexpected actions that will be necessary 26 to complete this project since the City Council has a much more frequent meeting 27 schedule. The City Council then unanimously passed a motion to ask the RHRA whether 28 it would be willing to consider an arrangement where the RHRA owned land would be 29 purchased by the City Councils TIF funds in advance of the eventual property closing 30 with the developer thereby enabling the City Council to more easily facilitate negotiations 31 and development agreement approvals. 32 33 The Citys bond attorney has provided an initial opinion that this kind of arrangement 34 would be possible, but she has not been able to review the necessary documents yet to RHRA_ Agenda (2-27-15) - Page 1 of 2