Minneapolis — A TIF for Nicollet

March 2013

The finance-commerce.com site reports that Minneapolis officials are backing legislation that would allow the city to use Tax Increment Financing to cover part of the cost for construction of a planned 3.5-mile line connecting a KMart on Lake Street and University Avenue Southeast. The proposed bill would define a district within a half-mile of the route in which increased property tax revenue could be used to pay bonds which would finance the streetcar for up to 25 years. Both cost estimates for the initial and later segments of the streetcar line and the amount of revenue that could be raised by the TIF have not yet been defined. However, the city is pursuing the TIF at this early stage as the scarcity of state and federal funds will likely not be enough to cover the full cost of the line.