Gateway, we hardly knew ye. Phase II

I posted yesterday about Gateway Inc. leaving its West Bottoms facility. I was asked if I knew if Gateway will be paying back any of the generous incentives the City forked over back in 1995. The short answer? From the best I can tell; no. I read the entire TIF plan last night. Even against the best advice of my wife who warned me that I'd never get to sleep because "you know how worked up you get when you start digging through one of those things." I also read the original ordinance and the Gateway section of the 2005 Annual TIF report. Yeah, I'm a geek. What of it? Here's the highlights. We gave back $1.5 Million in 1% Earnings Tax over the first 5 years of the plan. That figure is hidden in the EATS (Economic Activity Taxes) figures which also include sales tax. They're not broken out in the annual report because only a finance wonk like myself would be interested in that level of detail I guess. The initial dog and pony show put on by Gateway for the TIF Commission included an upward revised employment figure of 3000 people and a future expansion plan of Phase II which featured a 2 to 7 story office building of up to 200,000 square feet, and Phase III which from the best I can tell was a 2000 space parking lot. I won't rant about parking lots. Not in this post anyway. BUT! Beware the developer who shows you Phase II and Phase III when they're telling you they can't build Phase I without a handout from the taxpayers. Phase II & III are usually pie in the sky dreams that won't require any public subsidies. Do you think Phase II & III ever get built? Do you? Please answer no, I still hold out hope for my fellow taxpayers. Phase II & III are pretty pictures that make the TIF commissioners "ooh and aahh" and vote yes. They never ask for guarantees on Phase II & III because we all know a developer would never stretch the truth to get free money, right? Well? Okay you better have learned how to answer these by now. At least we didn't float any bonds for this fiasco. This plan was a "Pay As You Go" TIF which as TIF plans go is the least risky for the municipality. This story ends with an absentee landlord (Gateway) sitting on an empty building in the West Bottoms that we won't even see a full tax burden on for another 15 years. At least we got rid of all that nasty blight in the West Bottoms. Oh wait a minute. Blight can mean anything. A vacant building can be blight. Darn it! What did we get out of this?