With Board member Henderson’s empty chair at the center of the dais, the clerk called the roll. When it came time for the chair’s name, the remainder of the board stood and answered “Present.”

It is in that spirit I am limiting my comments for this week’s wrap-up. But there were two agenda items highlighted in the preview that will be coming back before council so I wanted to have something to refer back to.

The first was the 20 unit development referred to as “Urban ReWorx” on Nebraska Ave. Both in historic Ybor City as well as the East Tampa CRA this agenda was unclear on how much the board was being asked to approve but the applicant is requesting $5 million. The agenda did note the East Tampa CAC approved $2 million. What was left out is that is what the CRA staff recommended to them as there isn’t $5 million available in the East Tampa CRA budget for this project. There was only $1.5 million total budgeted for this type of redevelopment in East Tampa this year, they are hoping to get $2 million budgeted in the next fiscal year. To fund this project would require taking away from other types of projects. But they’re not sure from where. So it was continued until the July CRA Board meeting. One fact to keep in mind for this item — and other funding requests for CRA funds in general — the amount per unit. This project breaks down to $250,000 a unit. CRA Staff noted the recommended $100,000/unit ($2 million total) still exceeds what any other municipality in the state subsidizes per unit. The developer did counter-offer converting 6 of the units to 50% AMI and committing to capping the two ground floor ADA accessible units at 30% of AMI.

There was a broader discussion about how they approve the large grants and needing more financial information to make them. How much money is actually available in the district budgets when they approve the grants and what other projects are on the horizon. Right now, it’s first come first serve and folks filled their plates up.

Which gets to the last item highlighted in the preview. The changes to the grant application guidelines. I believe this step was to confirm the language for the changes with the final draft voted on for approval at the July 26th CRA Board meeting. I mistakenly asked if staff was asking for the change regarding special use alcoholic beverage permits. Staff stated they didn’t have recommendations so it’s unclear where the suggestions came from, but the board was on-board with approving the change. They also approved modifying the grant application process so liquor stores could apply as well. They were primarily thinking about neighborhood bars and facade grants; no one mentioned the $5 million East Tampa district grant for JC Newman Cigars and the Sanchez Y Haya project.