DeKalb County's development authority voted Thursday to give a $15 million tax break to the developers of a mixed-use project on Briarcliff Road near North Druid Hills Rd.
The property tax abatement was part of Decide DeKalb's actions in favor of a $180 million bond issue to fund the Manor Druid Hills Project near Children's Hospital of Atlanta. The development is set to include 381 apartments, 55,000 square feet of office space and a 140-room hotel.
The 5-1 vote for approval came over the objections of the Chair of DeKalb County's Board of Education and several DeKalb County commissioners, who said there was no need to subsidize the private developer of the Brookhaven project, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Decide DeKalb claims the project, being developed by the Miami-based Related Group, will create 270 new full-time jobs, including eight related to the multi-family residential housing.
In May, a vote on the bond and tax relief stalled after board member Andrew Greenberg said it was "the least justifiable inducement" he'd seen in his seven years on the board. Greenberg listed multiple reasons not to grant the tax abatement, including:
- The property involved is valuable land in a part of DeKalb already active with development. When the property went to auction, it had numerous interested parties who made no indication that they would need tax relief to develop this prime property. No developer should require a $15 million abatement to develop this property.
- This incentive creates an unnecessary precedent. The area near this development has seen a number of large-scale developments that did not require a tax abatement. Thanks to the CHOA development, that area is extremely attractive. Any new project on the current project site will significantly raise the tax base. We should not be creating an expectation that any developer can get their taxes reduced in this part of the county.
- I am very concerned by the developer’s claim that it does not have the financial wherewithal to meet our housing guidelines, as well as the very low cost it would actually require. This is a $200,000 impact on a $180,000,000 proposal. A developer with such threadbare margins is a concern for the county.
- While this proposal alleges a significant number of jobs, none of them are tied to the tax reduction. In other words, even if no jobs occur, the county has no recourse. There is no claw back mechanism. There is no way to reclaim the abatement if the promised employment fails to materialize.
Greenberg was the only vote against the bond issue at Thursday's Decide DeKalb meeting.
"The proposed abatement on this project sincerely undermines the spirit of abatements as an economic development tool," DeKalb County Commissioner Michelle Long Spears told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It is clear that a broad range of community voices do not support this proposal because the public benefits are lacking or non-existent."
The Related Group initially proposed the development, including a seven-story hotel and a six-story apartment building, in 2019.
