Fourth TIF OK’d by joint review board
The Colby Joint Review Board made the final motion to push through the City of Colby’s fourth TIF district on June 22. The district, which includes 47 parcels in Clark and Marathon Counties, will span from the southern limit of the city on the Marathon County side of Hwy. 13, to an area that encompasses the PCA building on the Clark County side of Hwy. 13.
The district will allow for commercial development of the areas that have been either vacant or dormant in recent years. Loos Machine purchased the PCA building in May and have begun renovating the property to meet the company’s needs.
The joint review board, which consists of members from the entities that would be affected by the creation of a TIF district including the City of Colby, Clark County and Colby School District, decided to approve the creation of the district by a unanimous, 3-0 vote. Northcentral Technical College as well as one other voting member were unable to attend.
Municipal Advisor of MSA Dave Rasmussen said the city would be assisting prospective manufacturing companies by creating the TIF district.
“The reason the city is creating TIF no. 4, there is a couple manufacturing businesses that may need assistance in there expansion activities and so forth. The creation of the TIF district, assisting them, is required of the TIF district,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen said without the creation of the TIF, it is possible that those parcels of land would stay under-developed.
“We answered the ‘but for’ clause for the TIF district, the ‘but for’ clause basically says that but for the TIF district this development would not go on,” said Rasmussen.
By definition, a TIF district provides incentive for commercial property to expand and grow. President and CEO of Loos Machine, Eric Mertens said the company worked with the City of Colby to ensure that they could grow in the city.
“Loos was interested in the former PCA property mainly due to its potential and proximity to our facility,” Mertens said. “The City of Colby acknowledged the benefits in seeing Loos’ growth take place locally and stated they would get back to us with potential offerings. Loos does look at TIF offerings as a positive incentive and appreciates the council’s consideration.”
The new TIF district will contain the old Packaging Corporation of America building (now owned by Loos), Smith Brothers, land south of Smith Brothers, the industrial park excluding Kelly Supply Incorporation and the field behind Colby Metal extending to Spence St.
The district went through multiple city committees and boards to ultimately be approved.
“We did publicize the public hearing. We had the public hearing and the first Joint review board meeting was held on May 18. On June 7 the planning committee did hold a public hearing and recommended approval of the TIF district to the city council, who also met on June 7 and passed a resolution indicating that they approved the creation of TIF no. 4 for the City of Colby,” said Rasmussen.
Mertens said the district will help the company spend money on attracting workers to the area instead of other infrastructure projects.
“The TIF funds may allow us to free up dollars that would have otherwise been used in infrastructure upgrades (roads between facilities/sewer and water upgrades/environmental abatements ) and allow us to invest into our manufacturing technology to attract skilled labor to our company and community,” Mertens said.
The board of review looked over the proposal and approved the resolution in under 10 minutes.
