FROM CONNECT OREGONWI.COM. Vandewalle and Associates will put together a detailed project plan for an expanded TID 5 for a final review this summer. The district would cover part of the area along and between Main Street and the railroad, from the north side of the village to Janesville Street, where it stretches east and includes some houses that could theoretically expand the downtown footprint. At the March board meeting, Vandewalle & Associates’ Planner Dan Johns presented a report on the Village’s three existing Tax Increment Districts (TIDs), along with more detailed information on the projected $32 million incremental value of the district, providing a sense of how much the board can spend on it. The new district essentially “restarts the clock” for TIF downtown after the economic downturn of 2008 to about 2013, Dan explained. “TID 3 has been kind of underperforming a little bit, but that’s largely because of the recession,” he said. “There was a lot of development that we expected to occur around ’08-’09 that didn’t occur for economic reasons. We feel the market is now right for those things to occur.” The district as it was defined Monday would include 11 separate redevelopment areas and a total of 211 parcels and 90 acres, more than 60 percent of which met the statutory definition of “in need of rehabilitation or conservation work” – blighted, empty or simply not updated for awhile. Creating the district would allow the village to take on new projects – including the Jefferson Street Crossing redevelopment downtown – that might not be feasible with the 15 years remaining in debt-ridden TID 3.
