By Lara Fominoff @fomsy1 on Twitter

Council votes to update and increase incentives for downtown Targeted Redevelopment Incentive Program

Jul 31, 2017 | 4:25 PM

LETHBRIDGE – The City wants to attract a lot more new commercial investment and development to downtown Lethbridge and has come up with some new ideas to do so.
 
At Monday’s (July 31) meeting, councillors unanimously voted to change the requirements of the current Targeted Redevelopment Incentive Program (TRIP) originally established in 2015.
 
George Kuhl, City Downtown Revitalization Manager, says the old program didn’t have any takers.
 
“We had, up until this point, a minimum investment value of $10 million and you’d get a $2 million tax cancellation with that investment….. up to date, no one has taken advantage of that program. The original program at the time we were putting it together there was a possibility that a developer would take advantage of it. That didn’t pan out, and so we’ve been thinking since then what might we do to adjust this program so that we could have more takers?”
 
Some of the key changes to the plan include:

•  lowering the minimum verified construction value from $10 million to $1 million
• making renovation projects eligible
• extending the tax-cancellation period to a range of six to 11 years
• increasing the maximum total municipal tax cancellation benefit for any single project to $4 million from $2 million
• requiring a minimum of two storeys instead of three

 Kuhl believes lowering the number stories and adding the renovation option will interest a lot more people.
 
“We think it will really be an incentive for existing building owners to re-do some of their buildings. Some of them have issues as far as asbestos or life-safety systems like sprinklers, elevators, maybe parking… maybe they want an additional story on their building. All of those things would be eligible under this program.”
 
Along with the TRIP, the city also has the Heart of Our City Housing Incentive Program (HOCHIP), which will provide $30,000 per new residential unit developed. However, individual projects can not take advantage of funding from more than one incentive program.