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UPDATE!
Land around the Trammell Crow development could be worth well over a million dollars an acre today. See the information at the bottom of this post.
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Why doesn't the Arvada city council have enough money to maintain basic services like keeping our streets in decent repair?
Sweetheart deals with developers that give away valuable property and future tax revenue is one of the big reasons why.
Instead of letting the good ol' American free market system work and create sustainable tax producing enterprises, the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority and the city council cut insider, crony capitalism deals with special developers.
The latest giveaway is to developer Trammell Crow to build even more high density housing at the site of the old RTD Park-and-Ride at 56th Avenue and Wadsworth Bypass.
With the metro region's growing economy and with housing at a premium, the land ought to be worth a fortune, but the politicians and bureaucrats at City Hall are essentially giving the land away and 18 years worth of sales and property tax revenue to a private concern.
How can it be that the politicians at City Hall brag about Arvada being so wonderful that folks are banging at the door to move here, yet at the same time they are giving away millions and millions of tax dollars in subsidies and incentives to private, for-profit developers to build here?
Remember this corporate welfare from Arvada officials accompanies $5.8 million of future sales tax revenue given away to America's richest company, Walmart; $2.5 million given away to buy Conn's a new HVAC system; the $10 land sale to Park Place Olde Town (PPOT) and $3.3 million tax giveaway; $7.2 million in tax rebates to the Solana apartments; the 85% land discount to Hilton sweetheart deal, a $3.2 million property sold for $500,000 and the lodging tax rebate; the $2.8 million bribe given to King Soopers to entice them to build at Rocky Flats (Resolution No. R16-098); etc.
At the same time those same politicians are asking us to hike the sales tax we pay on groceries and other items by 15 percent allegedly to be used to fix our streets. (However, first the money will go to big capital improvement projects -- will there ever be enough money left to get those potholes filled?)
Here is the Trammell Crow 'Disposition and Development Agreement' as a .pdf.
Here are the two most important outrages:
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UPDATE!
In 2002 a parcel of land of about half an acre, directly to the south of the current Trammell Crow development, sold for $850,000. On that site presently is the Kokoro restaurant. Of course, the Great Recession that began in 2007-08 deflated property values -- but we all know that the value of land and structures has come roaring back in the Denver metro area.
Yet Arvada Urban Renewal and the city council are still cutting this sweetheart deal with Trammell Crow selling 9 acres at the same location for $30.
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