EDITORIAL: No TIF for the Triangle

Fierce opposition to the proposed village-changing development of the Grafton Triangle had cooled in recent months, but now has been reignited as a flaming controversy.

In the face of vocal public criticism, village officials had rejected plans that called for major changes in streets at the east entrance to the downtown to accommodate an extremely dense multi-family housing development on a small triangle of land.

Now, the possible inclusion of the Triangle property in a new tax incremental finance district has raised fears that variations of those plans could become reality.

The fears are well placed. The purpose of TIF districts is to encourage development. Making the Triangle eligible for TIF funding would smooth the way for development and the hugely expensive infrastructure changes it would require.

Fortunately, citizen opposition is again impacting the issue. In response to it, the Grafton Plan Commission and Joint Review Board are now considering an alternative TIF district that does not include the Triangle. This is the right way to go.

Without the Triangle—an awkward add-on across the Milwaukee River from the rest of the proposed TIF district—the alternative is a well-designed tool for the economic rejuvenation of an aging and deteriorating sector of the village. Unlike many of the TIF districts created elsewhere in Ozaukee County, this one appears to meet both the requirements and the spirit of Wisconsin’s tax incremental financing law.

Much of the property in the district, including the old Goldberg foundry, is blighted and not likely to be improved or redeveloped without infrastructure upgrades and mitigation of environmental problems, which is precisely the standard set by the legislation enabling the creation of TIF districts.

The requisite is important because TIF is essentially a taxpayer subsidy for private building projects. Taxes on the newly developed properties do not go to the general fund to support municipal services, but are used to pay back loans that finance the improvements for the duration of the TIF district, often 20 years.

To the detriment of taxpayers, TIF has been exploited in many municipalities as generous incentives for building on valuable land that, far from blighted, was begging for development.

Port Washington taxpayers know all about that. Their city spent TIF money to reward developers of its most desirable lakefront sites, including land overlooking the harbor, where now a massive commercial structure fills space once owned and used by the public.

Grafton’s Triangle would be a temptation for a sizable outlay of TIF money if it were in the new district. It is highly valued land that does not fit any definition of blighted; Three Leaf Partners reportedly paid $1 million for the 1.5 acre site. But their development plans require a sizable public investment in street redesign, including obliterating and building over Grafton Avenue, now a major thoroughfare intersecting Highway 60 at the Milwaukee River bridge.

Critics of the plans view the shutting down of a heavily traveled street as an expensive and harmful accommodation for a project that many also see as a detriment to the surrounding area of the community because it squeezes too much development into a small site.

Surely, there are better ways to develop the site. The village should wait for them to appear while it concentrates on realizing the promise of redevelopment in a TIF district that does not include the Triangle.