The city of East Ridge is entering into a development agreement with Urban Story Ventures for a project known as the East Ridge Shopping Center in the municipality’s special border district.
The city now has more than a dozen development agreements with retail and hotel properties in the district, approved by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2012.
Within the district, which comprises most of East Ridge, developers approved for the program can recover the capital cost of improvements made on their site by receiving a portion of the state sales tax revenue increases generated by the improvements.
“Critical in this is the fact that it’s all state funded,” City Attorney Mark Litchford said. “Not $1 of this is from local option (sales tax allocated to the city) or from property taxes. These are funds returned back to the city that would not otherwise come to the city but for the border region program.”
(READ MORE: Law adds limits to East Ridge’s border region tax incentive expenses, adds oversight)