County adds 2 enhanced enterprise zones

From the St. Louis Post Dispatch 06/13/07
By Phil Sutin

CLAYTON %u2014 St. Louis County is dangling seven years of state income tax credits and a property-tax break to encourage offices and light industry in some of the county's most economically depressed parts.

The County Council recently established two enhanced enterprise zones in north St. Louis County after the municipalities in which they are situated agreed to them. The Central County Enhanced Enterprise Zone in Wellston, Pagedale, Hillsdale and Pine Lawn is likely to have more of an impact than the North County Enhanced Enterprise Zone, which includes Kinloch and parts of Hazelwood, Berkeley, Ferguson and St. Ann, Steven Anderson, vice president of business development of the economic council, said last week.

The county hopes the incentives will encourage financial institutions and other businesses to move their "back-office" operations, such as accounting and other paper processing, to the Central zone, which is less than 10 minutes from downtown Clayton, Anderson said. Three companies have talked to the economic council about moving to the zone, he said. The county also wants to attract light industrial, biotechnical and biologics companies and distribution centers, he said.

"We are not interested in retail," Anderson said. "The incentives provide no benefits for them." But he noted that stores would follow the people the business activity would bring.

The zones, Anderson said, offer three major incentives to businesses:

• Seven years of state income tax credits in a format similar to a stock or bond that can get money quickly into the hands of developers because the credits are easy to use.
• 50 percent abatement of property taxes on the value of new development in the zone. The abatement would last for 10 years. Companies would continue to pay taxes on the value of property before development occurred.
• Ease of administration. Companies would get the tax incentives after they show state and county officials that their projects qualified for them. The companies do not have to ask the County Council or municipal aldermen or council members for abatement as they do with other redevelopment incentives.
  

State law includes standards for areas to qualify as enhanced enterprise zones, Anderson said. The zones, he said, must be in an area of:

• %u2014 Blighted property.
• Pervasive poverty. One of the definitions of such areas is that 60 percent of residents must have incomes of less than 90 percent of the county's median income, or roughly $40,000 a year.
• High unemployment.
• General distress.
  

The North County Enhanced Enterprise Zone already has areas where developers can obtain incentives: NorthPark, a 550-acre office and industrial project in Berkeley, Kinloch and Ferguson, the closed Ford vehicle assembly plant and the cleared Robertson redevelopment area in Hazelwood. The North County zone adds incentives to make the sites more attractive, Anderson said.

But the zone includes two areas that have no previous development incentives: the Burke City neighborhood in southeastern Berkeley and a portion of St. Ann mainly north of St. Charles Rock Road but including an area generally between that road and St. Henry Lane. St. Ann for several years has tried unsuccessfully to redevelop an area south and west of hotels along a south service road of Interstate 70.