Earlier this week the Shawnee city council met with the USD 232 board.
Apparently one of the items they were going to discuss was the TIF district that the school board previously opted out of.......which basically killed the TIF district for I-435 and Shawnee Mission Parkway.
Things change..........let's look north to Wyandotte County. There is a very strong possibility now that the Wizards soccer team and Cerner Corporation are going to be locating in Village West.
Wow, what a coup for KCK/Wyandotte County. Shawnee could concevably benefit from that.
The key would be, IMHO, the type of development that would take place in the proposed TIF district. The article in the Shawnee Dispatch, http://www.shawneedispatch.com/news/2009/oct/14/city-asks-school-board-reconsider-tif-district/ indicates that some members of the School District were concerned about residential development in that area. Valid point. The lawyer for the development group indicated that any residential development would probably be lofts and townhomes. MY opinion....."probably be" is not good enough. "Must be" would be better. The area would be mixed use (see the Dispatch article). I believe the concern of the school board members about residential development is valid. Those concerns need to be addressed. We don't need developers going after Cerner's proposed work force. We need strong, viable, commercial entities up there
We need to be going after the life style/entertainment commercial properties. Like hotels, restaurants, retail and yes, some sort of destination venue. Maybe even a nightclub or two. Anybody for a Coyote Ugly Saloon? They got turned down up north (eventhough there is a Hooters up there). With everything that is happening in Village West we could definitely get some action down here. I may not be expressing this correctly.
If there were firm commitments from the developers, up front, as to what would be in the development then a TIF district might not be a bad idea.
Let's see how this plays out.
Comments about this blog entry? Post them on our forum at http://shawneeray.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=blog&thread=25
