The Ketchum City Council is considering giving business owners along Fourth Street a summer's reprieve next year by holding off on the continuation of the Fourth Street Heritage Corridor project.
For several months during the past two years, sections of Fourth Street have been a beehive of activity, as construction crews tore up the existing pavement and replaced it with wider sidewalks, benches, bike racks and art spaces.
After the first two phases, the most recent of which was completed in early July, the improved corridor now runs from Walnut Avenue west across Main Street to Washington Avenue.
However, last week at a council workshop on the 2009 fiscal year budget, Councilman Baird Gourlay said that he had heard concerns from neighboring business owners about shouldering the negative impact caused by construction for a third consecutive summer.
"There's a feeling among the council of giving the community a bit of a rest from tearing up the streets next summer," Mayor Randy Hall said in an interview.
In order to give an additional boost, the council and Ketchum Community Development Corporation are considering the creation of a "way-finding" system, which would include more signs to assist visitors in getting around town.
While the cost of such a project has yet to be determined, there has been discussion of dipping into the remainder of a $1 million loan that former Councilman Steve Shafran made to the city's Urban Renewal Agency last summer to help get the organization off the ground.
The agency must pay back the loan as prescribed by the negotiated terms of three-year, interest-only payments and two, one-year extension options with a possible 4.5 percent interest rate.
The plan is for the loan to be repaid using the tax-increment revenue garnered by the agency a mechanism afforded to cities that designate 10 percent of their tax bases as part of urban renewal districts. In Ketchum, the district translates to 836 properties.
Inside the boundaries of that district, the city will receive money from increases in the tax rolls that occur through new development or inflation. The agency will expire in 24 years, but projections indicate it could garner $20 million as its total gross earnings through the mechanism over that time period.
For its upcoming fiscal year, the city has estimated that the agency will receive $414,112 in tax-increment revenue.
To date, $650,000 of Shafran's loan has been spent on the second phase of the Fourth Street project, leading to the question of what is destined for the remaining $350,000.
"It's better to do one large project rather than a number of smaller ones, as it's much more cost-effective," Councilman Larry Helzel said. "I wouldn't mind not spending the money in this budget year and let it amass more interest earnings."
While Helzel said one of his top priorities is to see an affordable housing project constructed on city-owned land, he said that would likely be the result of funding through the city's in-lieu housing fund, rather than the agency loan.
Hall said that could be, in part, due to the fact that the intention of Shafran's loan in the first place was to ensure that the Fourth Street project stayed on course.
Councilman Curtis Kemp took a similar position to Helzel, stating that he would "just assume it stay in the bank until the next phase of the Heritage Corridor."
Regardless of Shafran's loan, Kemp said creation of the Urban Renewal Agency will vastly help fund projects around the city.
"In the future, we stand to benefit greatly from the tax-increment revenue, which will allow for capital improvement projects," Kemp said.
