Although Baton Rouge is just weeks away from the opening of an 89-room Holiday Inn Express in the former Savings and Loan Building downtown, a Tax Increment Financing district that is expected to generate $12 million to help finance the project has yet to be created.
That situation soon should change.
At Wednesday’s Metro Council meeting, the Parish Attorney’s Office plans to introduce an ordinance to create the TIF district as well as a cooperative endeavor agreement authorizing the city-parish to remit back to hotel developer Pete Patel 2% of the city-parish sales tax the hotel generates. The council will not discuss or vote on the measure Wednesday, but will set a public hearing on the matter for its May 6 meeting, at which a vote is likely.
Attorneys for the project and the city-parish are racing against the clock to create the TIF for the hotel at the corner of North Boulevard and St. Ferdinand Street. Baseline tax collections in the district must be at zero before Patel can begin collecting his rebated portion of the tax revenues that the hotel generates, and the hotel is slated to open in May or early June.
Assistant Parish Attorney Bob Abbott says the law firm previously working with Patel “dropped the ball” and didn’t complete the cooperative endeavor agreement with the city-parish or request that the TIF legislation be placed on the council agenda. Patel has since replaced that law firm with Phelps Dunbar, which recently handled the successful creation of a TIF district for Mike Wampold’s planned hotel on Third Street.
The state Legislature authorized the TIF for Patel’s project in 2007 in a bill that, at the same time, also created a special taxing district for the Hotel Indigo. Plans to redevelop the Savings and Loan Building took several years longer than did the Hotel Indigo, which opened in 2011, because the Savings and Loan Building changed hands in 2012 and different developers were involved.
—Stephanie Riegel
