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Continued: Will megamall deal usher in one for Vikings?
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By any measure, fiscal disparities offers a potentially rich source of money — and one that has largely been off-limits to fund private developments. This year, the total tax base contribution to the pool is $402 million.
The state Senate has already approved a plan that would take the additional fiscal disparities money generated once the mall’s second phase is built — estimated at $4.5 million annually — and give it to the city of Bloomington rather than putting it in the pool.
The city, according to the mall, would use the money to help finance the new parking ramp . In addition, the city would boost its lodging tax to help pay for the ramp.
Not 'new ground’
Mall officials said that the money being diverted amounts to only 1 percent of the total fiscal disparities pool, and that the mall’s exemption would be no different from those granted more than 20 years ago for other projects. Moreover, mall officials said last year’s proposal has been reconfigured to satisfy many critics.
“We’re not breaking new ground here,” said Kurt Hagen, vice president for Triple Five Corp., the owners of the mall, and the company’s manager of the second phase project. “Nobody is going to pay a penny for Phase II parking” other than those paying Bloomington lodging taxes and shoppers at the mall.
Hagen said the $200,000 in fiscal disparities contributions now generated annually by the second phase site — which is currently a parking lot — would continue to go to the pool.
Without public subsidies, he said, the mall’s second phase will not be built.
The 5.6 million-square-foot project, spread across 42 acres, will create 7,000 construction jobs and during the first 20 years generate $1.1 billion in new sales taxes, according to the mall. It would include stores, hotels, offices, a dinner theater and a water park, among other things.
As for the Vikings, Hagen said he endorsed any effort that brings large amounts of tax revenue to Minnesota. “If anyone can generate those kinds of returns [as well as the mall] for the state of Minnesota and the region, bring it on,” he said.
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Governor: Tim Pawlenty
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