The Corvallis City Council gave a quick and unanimous thumbs-up to a $3.4 million tax break for the Gordon Hotel & Residences planned for downtown.
The project will include a mix of retail and restaurants, 75 hotel rooms, and 92 new apartments – 17 studios, 56 one-bedrooms and 19 two-bedrooms. The tax exemption only applies to the residential portion of the complex, and it’s total will be parsed over a ten year period.
Corvallis’ Community Development Manager, Paul Bilotta, advised the Council that the City would see increased revenue from the project.
For instance, Bilotta reported that the three lots the complex would be built on currently have a taxable value of $924,757, and the City currently collects $4,668.20 in annual taxes from those properties.
But here’s what is expected if the complex goes as planned…
“The projected net taxable value of the hotel component is $18,925,122.22, which is estimated to generate $95,534.56 annually to the City of Corvallis. Following the 10-year exemption period, the total projected net taxable value of the entire project is $37,003,228.28 and is estimated to generate $186,793.36 annually to the City of Corvallis,” said Bilotta in a memo to the council.
He also says the hotel is estimated to generate about $670,000 per year of transit lodging tax with about $350,000 per year directed to the City of Corvallis, $150,000 per year to Visit Corvallis; and $170,000 per year to Benton County.
The developer will spend $46,904,118 to build the complex, and the tax break would offset 7.1% of that. Ten percent of the tax break would go back to the City, helping to fund future affordable housing projects.
Headquartered in Eugene, Obie Companies will own and operate the project. Their president and CEO, Brian Obie, told councilors that site prep will start in March or April, and that buildout will take about two years.
Four of the nine councilors are newly elected, making the unanimous vote a notable telegraph of their thinking.
Sidenote strangeness: Meanwhile, just a mile and a third away from the upcoming Gordon project, the Hilton Garden Inn is perhaps not doing so well. Apparently, they are in a legal struggle with their lender over a foreclosure, according to the Portland Business Journal.
Back to the council meeting: Wait, before returning to this week’s City Council meeting, we have to go back nineteen years because, well, developers and neighbors, and this is Corvallis.
Back in 2007, the then City Council approved a 10-lot subdivision along Brooklane Drive in Southwest Corvallis and some of the neighbors filed with Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals, or LUBA. They in turn found the Council made a few errors. Mainly, the Council had neglected to explicitly state the findings behind their decision. No big really, LUBA remanded the matter back to the Council to set a hearing, and fix said errors… and, well, then it got weird.
When it came time to schedule the hearing, the developer asked City staff for an extension, which isn’t particularly abnormal. But then, the developer kept asking for more extensions – the ask being so taken for granted at one point that a City staffer even reached out to ask the developer if he wanted another extension, which he did. And so it went until our fair burgh’s newly retained City Attorney advised, in essence, finish this already. Extensions, it turns out, are assumed to be for a ‘reasonable’ length of time.
Anyhow, at this month’s first Council meeting on Feb. 3, there was a lengthy public hearing on the matter. Many of the originally objecting Corvallisites still live in the neighborhood, and they still object to the subdivision.
However, the City believes its hands are somewhat tied, and that legally speaking, they have to limit their deliberations to the topics on remand from LUBA. They also believe they’re obligated to apply the ordinances and laws from back in the day, nineteen years ago.
So, the councilors tentatively approved the subdivision with some caveats concerning tree protections.
But it turns out a piece of written testimony from one of the objecting neighbors didn’t make it’s way into the hearing…
So, two weeks later: City staff put the missing testimony before the Council for their Feb. 18 meeting, and suggested the council reopen the matter in a limited way. The idea was, Council would reopen the public hearing, but limited to accepting the prior neglected testimony, and of course, whatever public and council comment and testimony and questions that might generate.
It turns out that the testimony begat quite a bit more testimony. The meeting adjourned after 4 hours and 21 seconds. It was about 10 pm.
To sort of finish off the matter, the council ultimately set a special session for Monday, Feb. 24 at 6 pm. Of course, with some of the neighbors saying they’re already accumulating funds for an appeal, whatever is decided this month is unlikely to be final. We’ll keep you posted, even if the matter goes on for another nineteen years.
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