PEORIA, IL -- The Peoria Park District Board will meet at 6:30 pm on Tues. July 14 at its offices at the Noble Center, formerly Lakeview Museum, to discuss concerns about the sale of 6 plus acres for a private apartment complex at Riverfront Park. Public comments will be welcome.
Here's the Journal Star's story on the concerns.
And here's the video the volleyball group has made expressing their own concerns. The Park District operates events in the city-owned park and oversees the volleyball leagues.
If city leaders want to attract young people to live and work in Peoria, alienating them by wrecking their volleyball leagues is not the way to do it.
The plans call for relocating the volleyball courts, making them smaller and too close to the road leading to the apartments from Water Street, a road that the developers reportedly have said is essential.
The road also will disrupt the already busy parking lot at the RecPlex, another Park District operation.
The developers apparently don't want apartment dwellers to have to drive down NE Adams, past Taft Homes (a Peoria Housing Authority property) to enter from Morton Street, an industrial area that is not attractive. That begs the question that the apartment complex would be squeezed between 2 chemical plants and a railroad line with long trains.
There's another issue, as well, the TIF district that would funnel property taxes from the complex into a fund to pay off city acquired bonds. Those bonds would pay for infrastructure improvements, including the road to the complex.
The Park District, Peoria School District 150 and other taxing bodies thus would not realize any property taxes from this privately owned complex for 21 years.
If the complex were located near the park, along Adams or Jefferson Streets, the infrastructure would would not be necessary and the taxing bodies including the city would receive the property taxes immediately.
But the developer in effect wants a city-subsidized project, in order to make greater profits.
The whole project stinks, including the so-called campaign contributions that developer Glen Barton made to 3 city council members and the mayor who then all voted to proceed with the project. See post below for details on this.
-- Elaine Hopkins
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