Bridge Space seeking tax break

Article today on cowork lee’s summit in the Lee’s Summit Journal.

Ben Rao, who proposes to renovate the former downtown post office into a cowork space, told the City Council he needs help to pull it off.

“I’d be kidding if I didn’t say I needed help from the whole community.” Rao said at the Jan. 5 City Council meeting.

He’s seeking tax abatements on the property to help offset redevelopment costs, including adding high-speed Internet, outfitting the building with solar power and LED lighting, storm-water control and beautification of the building.

The total cost for Cowork Lee’s Summit is expected to be nearly $1.7 million.

The cowork space would provide desks, conference rooms and a larger space for corporate meetings or “pitches” to be used by startups, freelancers, non-profits or small businesses, who would be members of the cowork space.

They will be able to network and share ideas and projects, Rao said. It also will have a small deli and coffee shop. Rao expects to have 150 to 200 members who will use the space for varying amounts of time. It would include 30 small, lockable offices.

Rao predicts the facility will draw entrepreneurs and also visiting firms from around Kansas City and the region. Like The Stanley event space, it would boost the number of people doing business downtown.

Currently the property is owned by the United States Postal Service, which does not pay taxes.

Assistant City Manager Mark Dunning said the abatements proposed by Rao for the building at 210 SW Market St. would cover 10 years of property taxes, cutting the expected tax bill by about $22,000 a year on the building. But the property would still pay about $11,000 in taxes.

Rao needed at least a tentative nod from the City Council this week on whether it is interested in approving that arrangement before going forward with applications, because the proposal is more than the 50 percent abatement offered in the council’s adopted incentive policy.

The council unanimously agreed to consider that amount, with Councilwoman Trish Carlyle absent from that part of the meeting.

Next, the proposal will be heard by the city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, which would recommend an amount for abatement. It would return to the council later for a final decision.

Council members David Mosby and Chris Moreno had some reservations about the amount of the abatement.

“I love this project,” Moreno said, but added it could be missing out on a larger-scale redevelopment of the site.

Mosby said the project was unlike abatements that the city had recently given to a couple of manufacturers for creating jobs. He said it’s high risk in that is hard to predict if any of the entrepreneurs using the cowork space would create a fast-growing business.

“Although this could be a job creator, just in an indirect way,” he said.

A link to the original article:   http://www.lsjournal.com/2017/01/14/144073/cowork-lees-summit-seeking-tax.html

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