State officials late Friday awarded $2.1 million in tax credits to NorthSide Regeneration LLC, developer Paul McKee's long-delayed plan to rebuild roughly two square miles of north ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
The credits come from the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage tax credit program, which lawmakers created in 2007 to help McKee's efforts. In three years he has received roughly $30 million of the credits, which are awarded to reimburse the cost of buying and maintaining land in large swaths of poor urban neighborhoods, and of borrowing money to do it.
It has become something of a New Year's Eve ritual for the Department of Economic Development. For the third year in a row, McKee's Distressed Areas application was stamped "approved" on the last business day of the year. Now he'll go out and sell them to investors to help fund his project.
But this year's take - $2.1 million - is significantly smaller than previous years, and well below the program's $20 million annual cap. It's a sign of NorthSide's slow progress - McKee bought little land this year, and thus had little to reimburse.
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The figure may yet grow, however.
In a recent interview, McKee said he was hoping to close several purchases - including the 17-acre Bottle District north of the Edward Jones Dome - before year's end, and would likely amend his state application if the deals go through. It was unclear late Friday if those deals have closed.
As he did last year, McKee had to agree to pay back the state if a pending lawsuit challenging NorthSide's redevelopment agreement is successful. That case is now state Appeals Court, with a hearing set for Feb. 1.