Trinity Uptown tax district may expand to east side

FORT WORTH — Officials may expand a special taxing district on the city’s near north side that supports the $576 million Trinity Uptown project to include land on the city’s east side, including Gateway Park.

Jay Chapa, the city’s deputy economic development director, said expanding the tax increment financing district’s boundaries to the east side of town will make it easier to coordinate local and federal Trinity Uptown funding.

"Gateway has federal dollars, and using TIF dollars to do that gives us a little more flexibility," Chapa said Wednesday after his presentation to the Trinity River Vision Authority, the local agency overseeing the flood control and economic development project.

Fort Worth City Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks, a member of the authority, praised the idea, saying it would encourage development in east-side neighborhoods such as Riverside and Greenway. With tax increment financing, the property value of land is frozen, and taxes generated by higher property values from new development are used to pay for public improvements in the district.

"I think it is a great idea," Hicks said. "I think it can really spur east-side development, and it’s a great example of how the project has changed."

Fort Worth created the TIF in 2003 to support the Trinity Uptown project, a flood-control project that mostly encompassed an 800-acre area on the near north side that included a bypass channel, canals and a town lake. The city pledged to spend the $116 million from the TIF on the economic development project over the next 25 years.

This year, the Army Corps of Engineers changed Trinity Uptown’s boundaries to include Gateway Park and the Riverside Oxbow Ecosystem Restoration area, adding about 1,000 acres on the city’s east side to the project.

Exactly how the TIF can be stretched to include Gateway is still being reviewed, Chapa said. It could simply follow the Trinity River, or a more direct link could be adopted. He said any change will have to be approved by the City Council, probably in 2009.

Chapa told the authority the 1,380-acre TIF is performing better than expected. It originally had a base property value of $111 million, and its projected 2008 value is $282 million, far above the $174 million predicted in 2003. Five years ago, the city estimated that the TIF would produce about $254 million in revenues, he said.

Land values have been steadily increasing as Trinity Uptown moves closer to construction. The TIFF is also expected to get a boost when Tarrant County College sells the land where it planned to build a downtown campus to private developers.

"I think it makes good sense, and if it’s good for the community, we should consider it," said Tarrant County Administrator G.K. Maenius, president of the authority board.