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closeGrant could LIFT city
Puyallup pushes forward with application for use
Chris Albert
The city of Puyallup is eyeing a competitive Washington state grant program that would help improve infrastructure needs in the city’s business cores of downtown and South Hill.
The Local Infrastructure Financing Tool (LIFT) grant is a financing tool that helps cities improve infrastructure needs to encourage economic growth.
It’s a tool Washington cities having been pushing for the state legislature to develop for quite some time, said City Manager Gary McLean, and has only recently come into use in Washington.
“Most states have had tax increment financing,” he said.
On May 22, the city will host the first in a series of public information meetings about the LIFT grant at 6:30 p.m. at the Community Resource Center, 107 N. Meridian.
Only one jurisdiction in Pierce County can be awarded the LIFT grant each year. Last year, University Place tried for the grant, but did not succeed.
It is expected that Tacoma and University Place will try this year, along with Puyallup, McLean said.
No matter the outcome, it requires the city to come up with an economic development plan that connects its business cores and encourages the growth of a variety of jobs, business and housing options in the city.
By receiving the grant the city would be able to pay for infrastructure improvements in an identified Revenue Development Area by leveraging the increased sales and property tax revenue from new business developments in that area. The infrastructure improvements must also be made in the designated RDA, will be implemented only if the application is approved and dissolved once payments for the project funding have been completed.
The program does not increase any sales or property tax rates, said Gary Long, who is working on the grant application for the city.
To complete the desired projects other funding sources besides the LIFT grant will be needed, but before the LIFT grant can be used those other funding sources must be identified.
If awarded, the grant would help pay for improvements in the RDA to roads , transit and pedestrian connectivity, fiber optic capabilities and parking by giving state property and sales tax shares back to the city in the amount of no more than $1,000,000 for 25 years.
The city’s application addresses three parts: redevelopment of downtown city properties, building mixed infrastructure on South Hill and creating connectivity between the two business cores.
The city owns nine surface lots in the downtown area, Long said.
“All of those are ripe for redevelopment,” he said.
By taking a public and private investment approach, the city could work toward maximizing parking that could encourage the building of retail, office and residential structures, Long said, without losing any parking.
“We have to gain more parking,” he said.
Second in improving infrastructure would be retrofitting the infrastructure on South Hill to provide a transit connection between the mall and the Benaroya Business Park throughout the day. Adding telecommunications capabilities is also an important piece to make the business core attractive to technology businesses like the ones found in the Seattle area.
“There are missing pieces of infrastructure out there including telecommunication access,” Long said.
The third piece would be the creation of a transit commuter shuttle system that runs often enough from the South Hill area to downtown.
“This would be a Meridian shuttle that would end up at the train station as well as downtown,” Long said. “It’s a strategy for the community to be able to live with $5 and $6 a gallon gas.”
The whole idea is to connect the two areas by addressing transportation needs and encouraging economic growth. The city’s plan calls for linking the two through more non-automobile connects like the use of a day-time shuttle, trails and bike paths.
It’s important that the city is a place people want to live and work and such a grant may make that easier, McLean said.
“With an increase in gas prices it certainly makes those options more attractive to people that this plan is directed toward,” he said.