STEDI plan helping to create a ‘larger pie’ by helping new industries

Two entities have signed off on amendments to a guidance plan that sets criteria for how Tax Increment Financing districts use the ad valorem tax revenue they generate. The next step is taking the document to the City Council for discussion and public input.

Simply stated, Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts are designated areas that allow governmental entities to recoup the investment they make when adding the public infrastructure that, in turn, encourages developers to invest in the area. It’s a tool used to transform blighted or underdeveloped areas into thriving businesses and industries that make the land more valuable, thus increasing the property taxes generated there.

Lawton used the process to pay for the infrastructure that allowed development of retail businesses, a restaurant and hotel/convention center along Northwest 2nd Street, north of Gore Boulevard. It also granted TIF status to the land in the west industrial park where Republic Paperboard expanded, and in the airport industrial park where PepsiCo built a new warehouse. It’s being considered for additional land in the airport industrial park where Fisher59 plans to build a new warehouse complex, and on the 40 acres at Southwest 112th Street and Bishop Road where Westwin Elements is ready to begin operations on a cobalt-nickel refinery pilot plant.

TIF designation allowed the City of Lawton to recover some of its cost in infrastructure for the downtown retail project, and helped the city reimburse Republic Paperboard for development of public infrastructure during its expansion and public infrastructure PepsiCo put in during its expansion. The same is true of plans by Fisher59 — like PepsiCo, contractors must install water and sewer lines, and extend a road in the airport industrial park. The City of Lawton already has invested in the 40-acre tract that is part of a larger 480-acre tract south of the west industrial park, building water and sewer lines that will serve Westwin and any other industrial entity that may locate there.

That’s why the project plan is so important, said Richard Rogalski, executive director of the Lawton Economic Development Authority (LEDA), the entity the City Council has designated to be in