White River Junction
“Any time there’s a vehicle for the town to get back money from the state, we’re OK with that,” Selectboard Chairman Dick Grassi said on Friday.
The Downtown Sales Tax Reallocation Program, one of several state initiatives to promote development in the heart of cities and villages, is a fairly simple redirection of sales tax away from the state, and toward municipalities.
In this case, the $306,000 is a portion of the sales tax on $8.6 million dollars worth of construction materials that developers Byron Hathorn and Brooke Ciardelli are purchasing to build The Village at White River Junction, a $27 million, five-story assisted living and memory care facility that broke ground earlier this year in a lot next to the United Methodist Church at the intersection of Gates and Currier streets.
If the town’s application is successful, the state requires that the money be spent on infrastructure within the designated downtown area, on the theory that infrastructure investments will spur more development.
“Downtowns are our economic centers,” said Caitlin Corkins, a grant coordinator with the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. “One of the things that people like about Vermont, whether they’re visitors or live here, is that downtowns are where things are happening. They’re vibrant and walkable.”
The circumstances of the application are one more sign that the local economies of Vermont’s 23 state-designated downtown areas, including White River Junction, are on the rise, according to Corkins.
Five years ago, when Corkins first took the job, the sales tax reallocation program was offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to communities, but few people seemed to know it existed.
“It had been several years since anyone had applied for it at all,” she said.
Now, the Hartford Selectboard has authorized a plan to spend the money to expand the scope of an existing project to extend Currier Street through Gates Street, behind the Northern Stage theater building, and connecting to South Main Street.
The town project initially was budgeted at $1.6 million, and was to be paid for entirely by a voter-approved bond that drew from revenues in the downtown tax increment financing district. But now, the additional revenues would allow for other work within the scope of the town’s master plan, including the relocation of utilities, the removal of old fuel tanks, the inclusion of a retaining wall, a sewer service upgrade and replacing the intersection’s sidewalk and curbing.
Grassi said that he doesn’t support wasteful spending of any form of tax money, but that he sees this project as an investment.
“It’s proactive instead of reactive I hope,” he said. “If it’s an option there where it’s going to save the town money in the long run and the taxpayers money in the long run, and support the TIF district expansion, that’s reasonable.”
In its application to the state, the town and The Village at WRJ estimated that the project would result in the creation of 50 jobs, and generate $145,000 annually in property tax revenues.
Though Hartford would have been the lone applicant for the Downtown Sales Tax Reallocation Program four or five years ago, it’s now facing competition from Middlebury, Vt., and Winooski, Vt., which each have turned in applications for the same pot of money.
The applications draw from a $2.4 million state funding source that also supports downtown and village center tax credits, so Hartford’s application is effectively competing against a total of 49 other entities. In March, a handful of state senators, including Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, introduced an amendment to the broad economic development bill Act 69, that increased program funding from $2.2 million.
Corkins said the 50 applications for the grants are an increase over the 44 from last year, which itself was a record high.
“There was a period of time when there wasn’t a lot of construction happening,” Corkins said.
Now, she said, “there’s been a lot of interest and good things are happening. It’s a good sign.”
Grassi, who moved to Hartford in 1971, said he’s seen White River Junction’s downtown scrape by many lean years.
“Just like every other downtown, when the malls started, everything left,” he said. “And always, our businesses had to deal with no taxes in Lebanon.”
Today, with the assisted living facility just one part of a development boom that includes several new stores and the building of new residential and commercial units along Main Street, Grassi said he credited a handful of developers, including Hathorn, Matt Bucy, Mike Davidson and David Briggs, all of whom have either recently completed or are in the midst of large scale projects.
“It’s very impressive,” he said. “A lot of people have faith in this community. Talk’s cheap, but when you put money in, it has a lot of meaning.”
Ciardelli, whose company had to partner with the town on the application, said the grant program helps to promote good relationships between developers and municipalities.
“It was not the case in ours, but in many cases, developers and town planners are not always the best of friends,” she said.
The application was made possible, she said, because the project has purchased a majority of its materials locally, which subjected it to state tax laws.
“We’re trying to buy as much in-state as we can,” she said.
Corkins said that the Vermont Downtown Development Board is currently reviewing the applications, and will announce funding during its next meeting on Monday, July 24.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.