Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Giant Eagle to Taylor Sq

Giant Eagle is in contract to locate in Reynoldsburg across the street from Taylor Square behind Logan's Roadhouse. It will be co located with a new Kohl's store. This Giant Eagle development is in the Pickerington Local School District and is not currently a part of a TIF. The Reynoldsburg School district filed papers a few years ago to get this land moved from the PLSD to the Reynoldsburg School district. This decision lies with the State Board of Education at this time and no decision has been made about the transfer.

Reynoldsburg would like to capture the non Tiffed tax dollars from this land because they agreed to a 30 year TIF for the Wal Mart development and contend that the surrounding area development has been spurred by the original TIF and their sacrifice of revenue to develop this land.

Once again, as I have stated in the past, there is a school of thought which I am a part of that the TIF should not have been necessary to bring retail development to one of the last areas of open land along the I_70 suburban exits, where the population and demographics demand more retail and service business.

So you will get your Giant Eagle but will have to deal with the SR 256 traffic snarl to get there each time you choose to shop there. I wish they would have located across from the new High School rather than Kroger,so it would be much easier to get to. Of course, Kroger is probably aware of the traffic snarl at Taylor Square and the 204/256 area and that some shoppers have returned to teh Pickerington Kroger from Wal-Mart to avoid this major hassle especially on weekends. Additionally, Wal Mart has admitted that they built the store at least 30 to 40% too small to handle the business which has exceeded all of their projections by at least that much.

I remember Mr. Berry telling me, in 1997, that in his opinion that there is little demand for retail in our community. This was during the '' NO homes behind Kroger'' referendum. I guess developers can make mistakes.

WalMart Planned Obsolescence

Regarding your comment about WalMart admitting their Taylor Square store is too small: it is my understanding that when WalMart builds a new store, they often know already when that particular store will close and be replaced by a new, bigger store nearby. I believe this has to do with TIFs, with the store moving when the TIF expires, so as to take advantage of a new TIF. I know this was the case in another community/state where I lived. I would be curious if this is true of the Taylor Square store?

TIF for 30 years

WEll the Wal Mart TIF is for 30 years and Wal Mart still pays the taxes but the city of Reynoldsburg just diverts the school and fire taxes to pay for the roads and traffic signals and sewers they installed to ''attract'' Wal-Mart. I can see a business leave if there is a tax abatement for a period of time and when the tax man comes calling at the end of the abatement period, that they will move to another area so that their expenses do not increase but in the TIF case, Wal Mart pays, the city just uses the money how it sees fit regardless of the needs of the Reynoldsburg Schools or Violet Township Fire Department.

Since it is a 30 year TIF, the school district had to sign off on the agreement. The did not sign off without incentives. The first is that the city of Reynoldsburg ''gave'' them the land and buildings on Main Street where the old police station was located. The schools are using this for a new administration building, their old one was leased space behind the Dairy Queen on Livingston.

Second, they get a cut on income taxes since the payroll is in excess of one million dollars at Wal Mart and other businesses in the TIF. Unlike Pickerington, Reynoldsburg does not appear to be reducing the income tax share portion to defer debt service on the bonds for the project even though this is legal.( I could be wrong as we have another meeting in February for an update) Pickerington is reducing the income tax sharing portion with the schools of the Marcus theater TIF to pay off interest debt service on the notes they used to fund the traffic signals etc. so the in essence double dip, diverting the property tax from the schools and then skimming off the income tax share portion required to fund the cost of the loan. This is legal, but the city could choose to pay this interest out of city funds instead of short changing the schools of much needed revenue.