Politics & Government

Mayor Allevato Steps Into Redevelopment Boxing Ring

The San Juan Capistrano Community Redevelopment Agency has about $50 million in debt and generates about $9 million in revenue annually.

is ardently opposing to sink redevelopment agencies in California.

This week, he floated a message praising San Juan Capistranos's redevelopment agency as an economic boon and fired off a letter to Brown listing 28 significant projects he and other city officials say "demonstrate how vital redevelopment has been for our city."

The mechanism has breathed new life into San Juan, including much of the historically iconic areas in downtown, including the , Franciscan Plaza and the Capistrano Depot. 

Find out what's happening in San Juan Capistranowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But because of the unique, and somewhat complicated funding mechanism used by redevelopment agencies, the projects have diverted coveted property tax revenues away from schools and the county, which provides basic services to San Juan residents, such as public safety and health and welfare programs.

Without the revenues, the state government has been forced to pay the difference, hence Brown's proposal. He says the annihilation could free up $1.7 billion that will be funneled back into schools and local services.

Find out what's happening in San Juan Capistranowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Since its formation in 1983, the San Juan Capistrano Community Redevelopment Agency has helped create about 1,500 jobs and seen the completion of 39 projects, according to city estimates. It did so with what is called "tax increment"—the increase in property taxes within a redevelopment project area, which result from the rise in the project area's assessed value that exceed the base year's value.

Redevelopment agencies are able to subsidize improvements to blighted areas by issuing bonds, then paying back those bonds with the tax increment.

Locally, opponents of taxpayer-funded redevelopment say public money should not be "gifted" to the private sector. They take issue with the $3.3 million awarded to car dealerships (an additional $4 million has been pledged if they keep their doors open for an extended period of time) and the approximately $500,000 in agency money used to pay for the production of a voluminous draft master plan for downtown. That same plan, they say, could be substantially hindered if redevelopment agencies cease to exist.

With the exception of a few housing projects for residents with low incomes, most of the projects were within the San Juan Capistrano Central Redevelopment Project Area. The area encompasses 429 parcels and about 1,097 acres—totaling 12.6 percent of the city’s total acreage.

Here are some of the projects:

  • The construction of the gym at Capistrano Valley High School, the headquarters for and .
  • Purchased the 100-year-old railroad depot, retrofitted it and sold it to a private investor. The space is now occupied by and the.
  • Paid to widen a street, install a traffic signal and add storm drains to make way for the development of the Capistrano Home Furnishings Center and portions of Plaza del Obispo, which also received fincial assistance from the agency. The agency also paid for the cleanup and removal of the Super 7 fueling station.
  • The creation of 198 units of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households.

In the last 28 years, it has also incurred a number of significant financial obligations, currently including: five promissory notes, five owner participation agreements and four outstanding tax allocation bonds.

Those total $50 million in debt, just over $17.75 million of which is set to be due this year, but on Tuesday, the agency elected to refinance about $8 of the $9 million owed to members of the Kinoshita family for the 1990 purchase of a swath of farmland.

Some of the other obligations include $6.5 million owed to the city of San Juan Capistrano; one of those loans has an interest rate of 9 percent. Additionally, there’s $9.78 million in tax allocation bonds issued to finance a variety of projects.

If Brown succeeds in his quest to dissolve the redevelopment agencies, the tax increment, projected to be about $8 million annually in the years ahead in San Juan Capistrano, will be used to pay off all of the debt. Other sources of revenue currently include about $900,000 in interest and $170,000 in rental income yearly.

"My plan protects current projects and supports all bonded indebtedness of the redevelopment agencies," he said Monday during his State of the State Address.

These are the current projects under way in San Juan Capistrano:

  • Tuttle Click's Capistrano Ford: 169,357 square feet, 100 employees, anticipated to open March 14, 2011.
  • : 28,271 square feet, 38 jobs, anticipated to open May 2011.
  • Vaquero West: 10,026 of square feet of retail and office space in the white and brown building across from on Verdugo Street, anticipated completion is in 2012.
  • Finalization of the : an update to the 1995 version to add 220,000 square feet of retail, 140,000 square feet of commercial/office space, 1,200 square feet of public institutional space, 240 condos or apartments, 214 homes and 214 hotel rooms ( and ).
  • : 26 housing units for residents with low and very low incomes. The project is currently in the design process.

While the debt will be paid off and contractual obligations filled, the city's ability to subsidize future redevelopment projects in the absence of the redevelopment agency (the city and the redevelopment agency are two separate legal entities) is questionable, San Juan's chief financial officer, Cindy Russell, said.

The Historic Town Center master plan approved by the City Council in October calls for the revitalization and expansion of downtown from 20 to 44 acres. In a column he wrote recently for Capistrano Common Sense, resident Jim Reardon wrote that supporters of the plan "need the Redevelopment Agency ... in order to finance their grand downtown scheme."

While it's possible that without redevelopment, some of the public infrastructure, such as water and sewer lines, wouldn't be installed to feed the new development, Russell said it's never been the intention of the redevelopment agency to subsidize the vast array of changes.

"I don't think it's envisioned that we're going to pay for every one of those things," she said.

"We would then be going to find other ways for the private sector to support it," she said of the plan if the agency were eliminated. "It's unknown [how the plan would be affected]. Whether you have redevelopment or not, you now have a plan, a vision, to follow."


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