Iron Bridge LLC, the Spokane company that plans to develop an office complex, valued at as much as $60 million, along the Spokane River east of Hamilton Street, expects to ask the city of Spokane to form a tax-increment financing district there to help pay for infrastructure improvements.


Kent Hull, Iron Bridges managing partner, says he hopes that the City Council will agree to use tax-increment financing to pay for road work, utilities, and riverside beautification in and near the 18-acre office park site. The development is to be called Iron Bridge Campus, and its site is located north of Trent Avenue, roughly between Erie and Hogan streets, a couple blocks east of Hamilton. Part of the site formerly was occupied by now-defunct Layrite Products Co.


The Iron Bridge development is expected to include five or six buildings, the first of which could get under way this spring.


Hull says he has talked with Mike Adolfae, director of the citys community development department, and the citys bonding attorneys about the possibility of using tax-increment financing for the Iron Bridge project, and hopes that a proposal for such a district will be taken to the City Council next month. He says that if the council decides to move forward with the district, it could be the first within the city; Spokane County formed its first TIF districtand the first one in the statelast year to fund infrastructure work at the Pacific Northwest Technology Park, on the West Plains.


If a tax-increment financing district is established at Iron Bridge Campus, the city would issue general-obligation bonds to pay for the infrastructure work and beautification improvements, and most of the property-tax revenue generated by the higher valuation within that district would be tapped to pay off those bonds. After the debt is paid off, the additional tax revenue would flow back into the taxing districts there.


Hull says the needed improvements at the proposed office park include reconfiguring Trent and the Trent-Hamilton interchange to accommodate a new left-turn lane on along Trent, making improvements to Perry Street within the development, adding some water lines, building a riverside walking trail and interpretive center, and redecking for pedestrian use the old Iron Bridge, an abandoned railroad bridge that spans the river near the north end of Iron Bridges property.


The beautification portion of the project involves cleaning up about a quarter-mile of riverbank adjacent to the Iron Bridge Campus site and replanting native vegetation there.


The estimated total cost of all of those improvements would be between $1.1 million and $1.3 million, Hull says. He says its unclear how much new construction would have to occur in a tax-increment financing district to generate enough tax revenue to pay off the bonds for the project. Estimates so far are that it would require between $20 million and $27 million in new construction to pay off the bonds. He says he expects to surpass that volume of construction on the site easily within 10 years.


Within the next year, we have enough construction to pay off two-thirds of the bonds, Hull says. We wouldnt have any problem putting up a letter of credit for the rest if they (the city) wanted.


Hull says members of Iron Bridge LLC have talked with nearby land owners, including Spokane River Properties LP, which owns the Brown Building Materials site and a total of 10 acres a short way down river from the Iron Bridge Campus site, about expanding the proposed tax-increment financing districts boundaries. Such an expansion would allow those landowners to pay for infrastructure improvements in and near their properties through tax-increment financing. For now, however, Iron Bridge is moving forward with a proposal that involves only its own site.