A rendering of Gateway Parke II’s proposed speculative office building to built along North Emerson Avenue in Greenwood. The developer is requesting a $875,532 tax abatement.
Provided by the city of Greenwood
A developer is asking the city of Greenwood for a more than $875,000 tax break for a speculative office building.
Gateway Parke II LLC is planning to build a 28,800-square-foot, single-story speculative office building on vacant land located at 845 N. Emerson Avenue, Greenwood. The building would be similar to the building owned by Gateway Parke Building One LLC, located immediately to the south at 853 N. Emerson Avenue, Pat Sherman, an accountant representing the developer, told the city council Monday night.
The proposed building will be for medical and mixed office-use companies, similar to the first building, Sherman said.
The developer plans to invest nearly $8.5 million in the project, a majority of which — $7.2 million — would be for improvements, according to city documents.
For the project, Gateway Parke is asking for a $875,532 real property tax abatement, which would be in effect for 10 years. During this same period, they would still pay a little more than $1.2 million in taxes, city documents show.
Ninety-three jobs are expected to be created once the building is finished and tenants move in, with salaries expected to be $19.50 an hour. The first building has average wages of around $26 or more, Sherman said.
Sherman asked the city council to consider suspending the rules to push up the decision on the proposal, as the developer wants to get the project finished before the end of the year. The proposed abatement was introduced to the city council on Monday.
This was then followed by a discussion by council members about how it would affect the public hearing for the ordinance scheduled for July 17. Some officials expressed concerns about being able to have the public notices together on time if it was moved up, but Sherman said the developer believed they would be able to have them ready before a possible July 5 hearing.
The council ultimately decided not to suspend the rules on Monday. However, officials are going to work to move the public hearing up to July 5, when it would be under first reading before the council. At that time, they may consider pushing the proposal through to its second, and final, reading, council president Mike Campbell said.
If they are not able to push it through to second reading on July 5, they would just follow the normal process, Campbell said.
