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HomeMy WebLinkAboutRDC April 22, 2026 JEFFERSONVILLE REDEVELOPMENT COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING MINUTES April 22, 2026 The Jeffersonville Redevelopment Commission held a Regular Meeting on April 22, 2026 that was called to order at 4:01 pm in the Mayor's Conference Room located at 500 Quartermaster Court, Jeffersonville, Indiana Board Members present: Scott Hawkins, Evan Stoner, Mike Moore, Sophia O'Coffey (by Zoom) Duard Avery and Teresa Perkins Staff Members present: Redevelopment Director Rob Waiz, Redevelopment Commission Attorney/City Attorney Les Merkley, Grant Administrator DeLynn Campbell, Administrative Assistant/Secretary Theresa Treadway, City Controller Heather Metcalf, City Engineer Andy Crouch Guests: Josh Darby with JTL/Prime AE Group, Kevin Daeger & Chris Gardner with HWC Engineering, Matt Hall & John Launius with One Southern Indiana, Jeff Holcomb with Welbuilt, Jack Koetter with The Koetter Group, Nick Lawrence with The Wheatley Group, Adam Niemeyer with Outrigger Industrial, John Kraft with MAC Construction. CALL TO ORDER Scott Hawkins President called the meeting to order at 4:01 PM APPROVAL OF AGENDA Mr. Moore made a motion to approve the agenda with Mr. Stoner seconding, passing unanimously by a roll call vote 4-0. CONSENT REPORTS Minutes: Mr. Stoner made a motion to approve the minutes from March 25, 2026 with Mr. Moore seconding, passing unanimously by a roll call vote 4-0. Claims: Mr. Stoner made a motion to approve the TIF Claims in the amount of$1,202,697.61 with Mr. Moore seconding, passing unanimously by a roll call vote 4-0. Mr. Moore made a motion to approve the Redevelopment Operating Claims in the amount of $1,858.11 with Mr. Stoner seconding, passing unanimously 4-0. Gateway TIF Report — Mr. Moore made a motion to approve the Gateway TIF Report with Mr. Stoner seconding, passing unanimously on a roll call vote 4-0. JTL Ongoing Projects Update: Ohio River Greenway Extension • Contractor is Hall Contracting. JTL providing full-time Construction Administration and Inspection. • Pre-Construction Meeting Scheduled for March 28, 2025. Substantial Completion date is November 1, 2025. Final Completion date is April 1, 2026. • Tree clearing was completed by March 31, 2025 per regulatory permitting requirements. • All demolition activities have been completed. Contractor has finished placing fill and stone base for the trail, rip-rap on the side slopes • Contractor has poured concrete for the trail on the west end of the project (from Riverside Drive to Upland Brewing Company). Contractor poured the curb ramp connection at Riverside Drive. • Contractor completed construction of the decorative retaining walls and the caps on top of the walls. Contractor is sealing the wall and installing stone base in preparation of pouring concrete for the remainder of the trail. • All of the slopes between the trail and the river have been graded and restored with rip- rap or topsoil, seed and erosion control blanket as required. • All of the concrete curb along the rail has been poured. • The concrete trail has been installed 100%. Contractor has repaved the lower portion of the parking lot shared by Kingfish and Upland Brewing Co. that was damaged by construction activities. All other miscellaneous paving has also been completed. All that remains is the handrail on: top of the retaining walls, bollards at the edge of the parking lot between Kingfish/Upland and minor cleanup//restoration. • Contractor completed the reconstruction of the ramp to Kingfish's boat ramp. • Awaiting schedule from Contractor for handrail installation. • See following page for photos showing the paving completed at Kingfish/Upland, as well as the reconstructed ramp to Kingfish's boat. Dock. HWC Engineering Project Update: Charlestown Pike Project • Both contractors are moving along nicely, phase 1 is expecting to finish their curb and gutter from Williams Crossing all the way to 265, that should occur next week and that gets them moving towards finishing stages. Louisville paving on phase 2, they are looking to get asphalt placed between King Road and Red Tail Ridge. They did get the asphalt from King Road to the north and rides pretty smoothly and we are happy with that. As of last week at our progress meeting, I pushed the contractors to give us a clear answer and they both admitted that they will need a time extension due to the weather, utility relocations and various other factors. Both gave me a schedule outlook to receive two months, MAC from June 19`t' to August 31' as final completion date and Louisville Paving move from June 1 S'to July 31'as final completion. Per Mr. Moore, I know everybody is anxious to get this done. It has tested a lot of our patience. I appreciate the information. Again I recall Holman's Lane and 101"Street frustrations and anger but in end worth it,glad we can see the end of the tunnel. NEW BUSINESS Project 360 Tax Abatement—Matt Hall, One Southern Indiana—We have an opportunity to compete for a significant economic development project that is not only looking here but they are looking at the state of Kentucky and Tennessee to make an investment and create some jobs. We, of course, want them to do that here. There is some property on Keystone Boulevard, Keystone Industrial Park for this project. Jeff Holcomb is here with the company to answer any questions you all may have. This project would create forty-four new positions and jobs that will pay well above the county average wage. These are over$30.00 an hour jobs that would go along with this project. They are significant investments. They would be building a new building, purchasing new equipment that would have an impact on the City of Jeffersonville over time. We ran some impact numbers for this project and how if we take a 10 year snapshot, which is, as we know, an abatement schedule for real estate anyway, there will be a $1.2M impact or benefit net to the City of Jeffersonville after that time. I want to thank Jeff for considering us for this project. To that end, we are requesting a tax abatement phase in at these new property taxes over time so they do not get hit with all that right up front. Ten years for the real property and five years for the personal. Happy to answer any questions. Per Mr. Moore, I'm thrilled. Anytime you mention the word abatement,people's eyebrows raise, but I would like to ask everybody to consider what does this land bring us now or will it bring us? $1.2M is roughly 12 police officers I know we are in competition with Kentucky and Tennessee. Thank you for considering in Jeffersonville, K name is quality anywhere around Southern Indiana. I think you're a great fit and I'm excited to be in the competition to learn. Again, I appreciate you coming. $32.13 average pay. Per Matt Hall, that's excluding benefits. Per Mr. Moore, that's a good deaL Mr. Stoner, stated he had no questions but to say Matt and your team, thank you all so much for your diligence. Obviously,I think everybody at this table knows that tax abatements are decried currently on social media. They're in the public square. I know things have really shifted because of the Senate Bill Act One and that municipalities are having those funding conversations. So as that landscape continues to change, it's just another opportunity for us to continue to educate ourselves and raise awareness. I just appreciate you all taking that very seriously and being willing to meet us and have those conversations and being open to those questions because it helps for residents to be able to feel like they ownership in the process, and that our most important shareholder, which is the citizen and taxpayer, has a seat at every table. But with that being said, I've looked at this from every different angle and asked myself the question, is this a good deal for Jeffersonville? I've come to the conclusion that it is and so I'm happy to support this today. I think that this is a positive step in the right direction for our city. I would say the economic abatement structure that's on the back end of that and those participation fees, I think those are very critical. If you saw in 2024, we had a $30K investment front the economic abatement fund that created a business incubator project at the Jeffersonville Township Public Library. It actually helped promote business owners and entrepreneurs that are trying to start their businesses from ground up. So obviously, we know that not everybody has access to certain economic tools, not everybody has access to certain resources and it allows anyone in City of Jeffersonville to access those tools and to put out their business plan. So I ask that we continue to think intentionally about how we spend those dollars and we don't hoard those economic abatement dollars, that we actually see those invested back into the community. Per Mr. Moore he is happy to support. Resolutions 2026-R-2 and 2026-R-3—Les Merkley—You have two resolutions in front of you. The first resolution 2026-R-2 is in reference to cover the real estate abatement, real estate owned by Koetter. We need a motion and a second to approve Resolution 2026-R-2, which is a recommendation to the City Council to award the real property tax abatement. Mr. Moore made the motion to approve resolution 2026-R-2 with Mr. Avery seconding,passing unanimously with a roll call vote 5-0. Next is the Personal Property abatement for Welbuilt FSG Operations, LLC. that would be the entity that would receive the personal property tax abatement, 2026-R-3, with favorable recommendation of City Council. Mr. Moore made a motion to approve resolution 2026-R-3 with Mr. Avery seconding,passing unanimously by a roll call vote 5-0. Per Mr. Hawkins, I will say,for me, I always like to use our system that we have in place, not just picking one business or another, but they scored 106 points on our system on whether or not to go with an abatement, which is one of the higher numbers I've ever seen on one of these things, so I think that is worth mentioning. Outrigger Industrial—Nick Lawrence, The Wheatley Group—Thank you for having us this evening. I'm working with Adam Neimer and some of Outrigger Industrial, which is an industrial developer from Columbus, Ohio. I've been working with them and engaging with them since last October. They have some property under control in the Northport Business Center, the Crowder property at the gateway on Centennial and Port Road. What we have is a proposal, a capital investment of$60M in a new industrial building. These are Class A industrial facilities, modern and mechanical buildings you see coming through River Ridge. Proposals to build three buildings between 2026 and completion by late 2029. The intent would be to come out of the ground with two buildings, right off the bat. Of those buildings, I believe we showed a site plan with the commission of these buildings. One is approximately 300,000 square feet. The other two are around 100,000 to 125,000 square feet. The intent is for them to go after Class A credit worthy tenants for these buildings. We offered a developer commitment of seeking and attracting properties, and targeting those with average wages exceeding 120% of the county average wage. That's a developer commitment that we want to make binding in this agreement. The overall request we ask for a development agreement is a 10 year, 50%per year abatement, rather than a phasing standard type of abatement, will be a level set flat across the term. What that equates to for the City of Jeffersonville at full build-out would be an abated tax liability across those three buildings of approximately$580K in property taxes per year and about $42K in the abatement participation fee we would pay to the City if it were granted. Per Mr. Neimer, they have been working on this since January 2025, so it's been about a year and half in the making. Outrigger Industrial, we're headquartered in Chicago. We've built about 11 million square feet of industrial product across the country over the last six or seven years. In the Midwest, we built in Chicago, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. This would be our first project in the Louisville market. I am really excited about this project and the potential here, and it's critical for us to start out right and be good neighbor, community supporter because we want to be doing projects in metro Louisville for decades to come. I think right now we have the opportunity to capitalize on a hot Louisville market and the River Ridge moratorium, and we're really excited about this site and the visibility and access off 265, along with all the retail on 10`h Street, I feel like we'll be in a really good position to lease the project if we are on par with some of the competing projects in Southern Indiana that have these 10-year, 50%tax payments. I appreciate everyone's time and happy to answer any questions. Per Mr. Moore, again,I would ask everyone to look at what was gained from this property over the last twenty years and again, we've got growth coming that's 110% above county average in wage, this is how we provide our police officers. This is how we build better schools and how we add to our quality of life. I whole heartedly support this. Mr. Merkley, this is resolution 2026-R-4, the resolution is approving the development agreement with Outrigger Industrial and recommending a real property abatement of the development agreement. For the abatement that is, contingent upon compliance with the development agreement terms. Mr. Moore made the motion to approve resolution 2026-R-4 with Mr. Avery seconding,passing unanimously on a roll call vote 5-0. QUESTIONS FOR OR COMMENTS BY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR I have just one thing at Picasso Point building, I would like to freshen up the apron on it doing all three sides, cost would be$7500. Mr. Moore made a motion to approve with Mr. Avery seconding,passing unanimously on a roll call vote 5-0. BOARD COMMENT Ms. Perkins—We are winding down the school year, not quick enough for some but things are going very well. Building is going on at the new middle school, it's huge, completion fall of 2027 and the natatorium is moving along as well. Mr. Stoner— Do not have much but I did reach out to Rob, Seth Lever from the tourism bureau, had reached out about apparently he has some experience and insight into theater districts, and was hoping we could maybe set something up with him and just talk about this idea at Picasso Point, see how we can maximize that space. Mr. Avery— I want to thank the leadership in Jeffersonville for the excellent economic development process we're going through. Superb land usage, growth development is done very well. Plus, I want to thank the companies that are investing money here, which gives us long term benefit and income. It's very impressive, and I hear nothing but good stories about everything. It's not something we're going to be benefiting from for a week, it's going to be years and years and I want to thank everyone for that. Mr. Moore—I just want to thank Greater Clark County Schools for a dinner fundraiser at Huber's, Champions for Children, it's just amazing. I know being on the school board can be difficult and you all are doing an outstanding job. $185K was raised initially but still more coming in. It was nice to walk in a room of approximately 500-600 generous giving people, everybody had a smile on their face. Everybody left feeling like a job well done, something accomplished. All the corporate sponsors who played a big role in building our schools. As a parent who raised three kids through our Jeff High public schools I had goosebumps, great job. Ms. O'Coffey—Jeffersonville is more magical than Disney Mr.Hawkins—I would just add with the painting of the Picasso Point façade to make sure to have a discussing with what it is ultimately going to be,which is what we discussed last time, that somehow whatever we do is reflective in that usage which obviously it would be. NEXT MEETING May 27, 2026 at 4:00 pm ADJOURNMENT Mr. Moore made a motion to adjourn at 4:25 pm Submitted By: Theresa Treadway \A prey