Tax credits to boost downtown

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This article was published 25/03/2010 (5765 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE Selinger government is ready to roll out tax credits designed to stimulate new housing in downtown Winnipeg, city and provincial sources say.

Premier Greg Selinger, Mayor Sam Katz and property developer Qualico are expected to attend a 10:30 a.m. press conference in the Exchange District to announce the province’s tax-increment financing program, a funding mechanism that allows new taxes that flow from new developments to further fund those same developments or others within blighted areas of a city.

TIFs work best in neighbourhoods where properties are undervalued. When new developments trigger property reassessments, the extra taxes are then either returned to the developer as rebates are funnelled into other improvements in the immediate vicinity.

Governments in several North American cities like the mechanism because it doesn’t cost them a penny, as the tax revenue they “give up” wouldn’t even exist without the new projects.

Since 2007, Winnipeg has been offering municipal property-tax credits in inner-city neighbourhoods under a refund mechanism called the multi-family and mixed-use tax credit program.

While several blocks have been revitalized with the help of the program, developers called on the province to double up on the program by creating education-tax credits to bridge the gap between the cost of projects and the potential profits.

The province passed TIF legislation in 2008 and has since been working out the details of the plan. The province wanted to ensure its own TIF would stimulate some affordable housing units in addition to the upscale condos that have already sprung up in the Exchange District, city officials have said.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca