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Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the U.S. Department of transportation Value Capture Strategies and Tax Increment Funding: The Primer . At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. You may ask a question at any time via the telephone by pressing * number one on your telephone keypad. If she should require assistance during the call please press star and then zero. I will turn the conference over to our host.
Thank you. hello everybody. I would like to welcome you all to today's Federal Highway administration webinar tax increment funding. This is a webinar that will provide you a few examples of the use of tax increment funding. Very pleased you could join us today. Let me give you a really quick overview of what value capture is and with the everyday accounts program is at federal highways. It is a program that is a state based model which we use to identify and rapidly implement but underutilized -- in the Highway world. With the idea of shortening the project delivery progress enhancing roadway safety, reducing congestion and so forth. We go through a two-year cycle for each of the EDC cycles. We were apart of EDC number five. Even though EDC number five is concluded we are developing technical materials and offering assistance to get our partners to consider and implement belly capture techniques. Bailey capture is based on the notion of the economic principle of the beneficiary pays when the public invests in infrastructure, good performing highways. There is a benefit that accrues to the landowners that are adjacent to the infrastructure facilities. Those landowners can further enhance the value of their property by making improvements such as building on the property, and enlarging buildings, increasing density and so forth. There is an inherent value to the land that is coming simply from the fact that the access has improved and other features that have provided by the transfer station infrastructure which again the public sector paid for. In essence it is a windfall for the private landowners. The concept looks to recover a portion of that publicly created value and return it for additional projects or for the project that helps to enhance the land value. We, as a part of our of value capture innovation we came up with a range of different techniques. Again the alternative not all of them are suitable in all locations and all context.. There is likely to be one that will be appropriate for your purposes. It really can help support our local partners who are eligible for federal aid funding as well. It is a part of our menu of assistance that we offer. All of these materials are available online. We have also assembled enabling legislation by state for each of the techniques we are continuing to develop technical materials. As we develop materials we are adding them to our website. We look forward to assistance to those interested in moving forward. That is an introduction to what we are trying to accomplish. We will do a deeper dive into tax increment funding. I will handed over to Pepper Santalucia to take it from here.
Thank you. welcome to this event. My name is Pepper Santalucia. I will be facilitating today's webinar and helping you address any technical problems. In the top left corner of the screen you will see a window or a pod called audio information. That has the phone then you can use if you're having any issues. We encourage you to dial in and listen that way. You may have better audio quality in that case. In the lower left corner you should see a window called audience chat. That is where you can put comments for presenters. We will also note if you have trouble seeing the slides there is a full-screen mode. If you look toward the top of the window it holds the slide now. It enables you to get into the full-screen mode to then see the slides more clearly. Today's webinar will run until 3:00 p.m. Eastern. We will field questions for each presenter at the end of their presentations. We will also open the telephone lines. We will take the question. You indicate your interest in doing that are hitting * one. We will remind you about that. It will be available to download at the end of the webinar but just to let you know we are recording the session so people can listen to the webinar at the same time. That will be posted to the FHWA webinar. If you're interested in continuing education credit for today's webinar we will provide information at the end of the webinar on how to obtain confirmation of your participation. Before we began we have a few poll questions that we invite you to answer right now. This will give us a better sense of who is listening and who is participating in the event. Also, your level of knowledge regarding the topic of today's event and also to value capture tools in general. Thank you to those who have responded. We invite the rest of you to click the buttons next to your desired response. While you're working on the poll questions I would like to introduce our moderator for today's event. Terry is the principal technical adviser for innovative transportation and planning at the U.S. D.O.T. center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has over 30 years of experience working at the regional state and federal levels on issues involving transportation, planning, and finance. Terry, I will invite you to react to our poll results.
Great! Thank you, pepper. I hope people keep logging in their results. It looks as if somewhere around half of all of the participants are from local government or the NPO or RPO's. That is exactly our intended audience for this specific webinar. In terms of the current level of knowledge, 38% are somewhat knowledgeable. About half have heard but don't know very much so we cope this is a productive two hours that you at the ends will actually have greater experience. In terms of your level of knowledge with tax increment financing, it is hovering somewhere around somewhat knowledgeable. For most of you, you do not have a fifth district and we are hoping we provide you with lots of ideas for that.
So, with that, let's move to our presentations. Our presentations today, first we will have a short video from the U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete two. Then we will hear from Mr. Rick Rybeck from Just Economics. We have Jim Bennett from the city of Maine. Then finally Tobin Morris from Colliers Securities. S pepper mentioned we will have a question and answer period. If you have any questions during any of the presentations, we ask you submit them to the chat pause so we can queue them up for the speaker. When possible we will try to respond with answers to the chat part. In addition, we will ask Anna, the AT&T operator to open telephone lines for questions and those who have called in over the phone. If we don't have time to address all of the questions submitted today, we will post a document that lists all of the questions and answers on the federal highway value capture website. Now, we want to lead often hear a recorded message from the Secretary discussing the value of the every day counts program. Pepper, if you can queue up that video.
Thanks Terry. I am working on getting it to play.
I want to thank the team at the Federal Highway administration's everyday accounts initiative.
For those who may have dialed in, I invite you to unmute your speakers for the length of the video.
I want to welcome everyone who is presenting and attending this [ No audio ] important gathering. I hope you will bear with me -- [ No audio ]
A special welcome to my former colleagues in South Bend Indiana.
I want to thank the team at the Federal Highway administration's everyday accounts initiative for your hard work. I want to welcome everyone who is presenting and attending this important gathering. I hope you will bear with me for a special welcome to former colleagues from my hometown of South Bend, Indiana Tim Corcoran and Michael Divita. I know I am preaching to the choir right now but -- [ No audio ] I still want to pause -- [ No audio ] to mention how important it is that we -- [ No audio ].
Review innovation as a reflection of our priorities. Is a practice we cultivate in service of the needs of those -- [ No audio ] of those communities most affected by the decisions we make. That is exactly how -- [ No audio ]. The partnership among federal, state, local -- [ No audio ] regional, territorial, and tribal governments and the private sector is the underpinning of EDC's model and it is why it has been so successful. As you know we are arriving at a transformational moment for our country's infrastructure. The presidents American job plan would help fix and modernize every aspect of our transportation system. Investment but innovation at a scale that we need to address the generational challenge and extraordinary opportunities we face. It represents the biggest investment in American jobs since World War II. Creating good paying jobs that were available to those with and without a college degree. The jobs are going to create, the infrastructure projects we envisioned are going to help communities across the country including those represented at this webinar. It is very important that we make sure smaller communities have just as good access to these kind of opportunities as larger ones. When we think about America's history shaping projects, the transcontinental railroad, the new deal, we think about it best for its communities. [ No audio ] train station that connected them to opportunities or -- residence for who are newly able to drive to loved ones --. This is the same framework we are using to understand the potential impact of the American jobs plan. We are thinking about a bridge repair that will empower a town and keep its residents safe. We are thinking about new broadband access that will allow children to do homework or their parents to do their job. We are thinking about electric vehicles charging stations that will make it possible for a rural family driving long distances in a new electric pickup truck to save hundreds of dollars every year. We count on all levels of government. Is a practice we cultivate in service of the needs. The partnership among federal -- [ No audio ] as you know we are arriving at a transformational moment for our country's infrastructure. The presidents American's job plan will help fix and modernize every aspect of our transportation system. It would bring not just investment but innovation for the scale we need to address challenges and opportunities we face. And represents the big
I apologize to everyone for the video issues we have. I would like to introduce Mr. Rick Rybeck. He will provide us of a brief overview of the tax increment primer. He is an attorney with a Masters degree in real estate and urban development any since 2009 he has been the director of Just Economics. For the past two years Rick has been assisting the federal highway for the everyday accounts initiative on value capture. Rick, do you want to start your presentation?
Great! Thank you, Terry. Thank you to Secretary Blue Jays and federal highway for sponsoring this important work. I am going to provide a brief introduction for tax increment financing. I will gloss over some of the points so we can spend time with the case studies that our next presenters will provide. If you need more information you are going to be able to download the slides at the end. You can ask questions during the Q&A. This is the outline of my presentation today. On each slide there will be a number in the upper right-hand corner that will correspond to this outline. We will start off with the overview. Here is the basic model of a TIF. Basically, the blue rectangle you see at the bottom left there represents the revenue that an area that is economically distressed or stagnant as provided. The revenue is steady because economic activities are stagnant or declining. What you see is when it says TIF adopted, there is a black line and curbing up. what that shows is an infrastructure project is catalyzing private-sector development and economic activity and the increased activity is producing more revenue. The gap or the distance between the curved line and the blue rectangle, that is the tax increment. That is the additional revenue that is produced. The way the TIF works is that the tax increment, instead of going into the federal -- the general fund, it is segregated into a dedicated account that is used to pay for the infrastructure project itself. As you see toward the right, it says TIF dissolved. Once it is completed and has been paid for, all of the revenue under the black line goes into the general fund. And, tax increment financing or tax increment fundic has different names in different places. Not important that we spend time on that now but just be aware of that. Why do we do TIF's? First of all, it can raise funds for infrastructure projects . It is a new source of funding. It is also a budgeting tool. It is assumed the revenue produced by this infrastructure project would not exist in the absence of that infrastructure project. It is producing its own revenue. Because the revenue and spending is off budget, politicians can polite this approach. Again, why do we use this? Because, well, on the left we have traditional funding sources for state and local transportation. On the right, we have needs and oftentimes there is a gap. Tax increment funding can fill that gap. That development will enhance tax revenues that will be used to pay for the project. How do you establish a TIF? There are six primary steps for establishing a TIF. We will go through them one by one. First off, is a TIF authorized? If so, what are the criteria? TIF's are authorized in all states except for Arizona. Just because you aren't in Arizona does it mean oh goody, I can do a TIF. You have to look at your own state enabling legislation to find out if your unit of government can actually do it. For example, some states may allow cities to implement TIF's but not allow counties. In other states it may be vice versa. You will hear me say this a lot. The bottom line when you are implementing a TIF is look at your states legislation. That can tell you what you can and what you need to do. Once you know you have the authority to do it, typically, the state enabling legislation will have criteria for what areas are eligible to be considered designated as a TIF. Typically, these include a history of economic stagnation. You want to make sure the area will meet the criteria. The enabling legislation will contain criteria for the TIF project itself. It will catalyze economic act committee and do so, so the revenue generated will be sufficient to pay for the TIF portion of the project. A lot of times if there is a requirement that development would not occur, but for the TIF, then, as a part of your TIF development process, you have to make a finding. In the absence of your TIF project, development would not occur. Then, there are other considerations that are important to document. First, the economic activity will generate enough revenue to fund the project for at least the portion of the project you're going to fund with the TIF. The next two are a little more difficult to comprehend but I have some pictures to help illustrated. First, you want to make sure the economic activity you are inducing will not create demands for increased government-funded facilities or services outside of the TIF project itself. In other words, because we are sort of freezing general revenues at the pre-tran35 revenue, if we are putting other demands on government facilities there may not be revenues for which to pay for them. The other thing to keep in mind and to look out for, if we are catalyzing development in a TIF district, are we displacing economic development or inhibiting economic development that would otherwise happen elsewhere? If we are, is that a good thing or a bad thing? In the lower left corner is the square block. Half of it appears to be open space in the building that is on it seems to be two or three stories. Much taller buildings and buildings that fill out the entire square. They are going to produce some infrastructure. When they do so they can be sure that the revenue will be in a for the infrastructure project itself and that it will not be putting demands on other city services. For example, this new development in the yellow highlighted block may require transit. Because we are in downtown we can be pretty certain there will be a bus line a block or two away if not on an adjacent street. The water, the sewer, electric, gas, they are are really there. Police and fire are already nearby. All of this is good to go. Now, let's think about another scenario. Here we have the same metropolitan area. Downtown is off the picture to the right. What we see is the edge of the metropolitan area. We also see the area where the suburbs give way for the rural environment. Was for the sake of argument assume the area is the same size as the same block we were looking at before. Let's say you want to use a TIF project to incentivize the of that been filled in the same way we did before. We know the new development is going to produce a lot more tax revenue than the being filled does so there will be a substantial tax element there. That will probably be enough to pay for the new road, the dotted purple line that connects to the Red Square to the highway below. Will that tax increment be enough to provide water, sewer, electric and gas? If there is residential development where would those kids go to school? If the police and fire need to respond to the development there, will they be able to get there in a timely way or do they need to build a new substation? That is what we were talking about when we were preparing that development to this development in downtown. The final point if there is limited demand in this metropolitan area and we develop this beanfield perhaps are we precluding the development in this downtown location. One thing to be aware of is the development in the beanfield is going to have bigger environmental impacts as well as bigger impact on the infrastructure as we just mentioned. Tremendous demand on other public goods and services. These are things to keep in mind when we are deciding if, when, and where to implement a TIF. Now, let's think about the boundaries. Again, look to your state enabling statute. That will tell you how to do it. You want to make sure properties within the TIF district are benefiting from the TIF infrastructure project and that the district will be large enough to generate this sufficient revenue you need to pay for the project. Here is an example of the west side of Chicago in this Westside area outlined in black has several TIF districts there in blue. That is not one TIF district but several. One of the things you should note here is it looks like TIF districts take up somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of the area here. That is going to have impact in terms of general fund revenues. That is something you need to be careful about. Here, I have highlighted one of the TIF districts. This is the West Ogden TIF. It is TIF number 48 highlighted in yellow. When you download the slides later you can follow that link to finally redevelopment plan for this TIF, the TIF ordinance and other related reports and data which may be important if you are thinking about all of the details involved in implementing the TIF. This is a good place to get a feel for what is required. Now that we have figured out where the TIF is going to be and what the boundaries are, what revenue sources are available? Again, look to the state enabling statute. Is the jurisdiction that you are with, are you authorized to levy and segregate the types of revenues that the state enabling statute says can be used for TIF legislation. Based on the plan, are your TIF revenues likely to grow as a result? The assumption that revenues are flat and stagnant they will stay the same without the TIF project but with a TIF project they will increase. You can see the vertical green lines outlined in this graph pretty clearly . This isn't always the case. In some cases revenues may be declining before you implement the TIF. If we simply benchmark the TIF at the beginning of the TIF project, we would actually be giving a boost to the general fund revenue and perhaps shortchanging the tax increment. On the other hand you may have a different scenario where tax revenue in the TIF area will be increasing anyway. That is the dotted line above the horizontal dashed line. What this shows is if we benchmark revenues when the TIF starts and we limit general revenues to that, we are for changing the general revenue fund in this case and giving a boost to the tax increment fun. He wants to be careful about the context of your particular situation and define the base revenue and the incremental revenue appropriately to your context. Finally, most likely, you are going to hire consultants to figure out the timing and magnitude of new development so you can figure out the timing and magnitude of new tax revenues that can go into the TIF account. Most likely this is going to be a range, an estimate and what we are going to do is figure out the timing and magnitude of these increases year-by-year. One of the things that is important to consider as you are doing or as your consultant is doing these estimates is that they are only an estimate. These estimates are subject to certain types of risks. Two primary risks are risks associated with the economy. I am thinking about the national economy, the regional economy and the local economy. They are subject to different dynamics in different risks. There is also a risk for the project itself. Will there be delays? Will there be cost? Will the project perhaps failed to have the catalytic impact on development you anticipate at the beginning? These are just a few of the risks that have to be accounted for. What you end up with is a range of possible increases in revenue from low to high with medium being somewhere in the middle. The range between the low and of the high is going to get larger the further out in the future you go because of course, uncertainty becomes more the further the estimate is made. Now that we have finalized -- we know what the project is, we know what the cost and the revenues will be, we have to compare two calendars. It is going to be a calendar during which we expect the incremental revenues to come in and then there is another calendar for the spending on the infrastructure project. If these calendars sync up well we can pay on the project as the money comes in. In many cases, the infrastructure spending calendar will require more spending and more spending sooner than the tax incremental revenue will come in. In that case you will need to finance your project and the TIF revenue will be needed to pay not just for the project cost themselves but for the financing costs that go with it. Those are things to keep in mind. Finally, once we have figured out all of these five steps, according to the state enabling statute and local requirements you will have a notice in public hearing and you will actually enact the ordinances that are required. Now, how do you administer the TIF? Primarily you have a redevelopment plan. You have to make sure the redevelopment plan proceeds accordingly. As you go forward, as revenues in your area increase above the benchmarked amount, you need to make sure the tax increment, as it is defined appropriately for your context is deposited out into the general fund but deposited into your project. Finally, you have to pay for the TIF cost from that account. Now, legal and regulatory issues. We will gloss over those but we can deal with them in greater detail during Q&A or off-line if you so desire . Basically, as we mentioned, the TIF state enabling legislation establishes criteria for the TIF district, for the TIF project, for what revenues can be used and for permissible activities. All of these rules need to be followed scrupulously to avoid legal problems. The state enabling statute may require the local jurisdiction made findings. If you are required to make a fighting you have to do the research and make the finding. Don't skip any steps. One thing to keep in mind is ministates have laws that prohibit the spending of public funds to create private gains. As Stephan mentioned during the introduction, sometimes in a course that is particularly true in this TIF example, we are undertaking an infrastructure project to benefit nearby properties. We have to look to the state enabling statute to see if they carve out the activities or if the enabling statute finds a way to distinguish the activities so they don't fall into this category of public spending for private gain. Again, follow this guidance to avoid illegal conduct. Finally, getting back to the redevelopment plan itself, some redevelopment requires side assembly. Maybe that requires evident domain. Evident domain has a whole host of substantive and procedural requirements. Make sure you adhere to those requirements scrupulously. Finally, as we mentioned before, you want to make sure we benchmark the revenue before the TIF starts, it is due. Other agencies, like school districts or water and sewer districts there may be a separate text entity or the same but they are relying on the general funds for their operations. If they think you are shortchanging them, they are going to be highly motivated to see when they will often have the resources to do it. Care must be exercised in that regard as well. Adhere strictly to the requirements. I will not talk about the judicial standard of review because that is too much in the weeds we can talk about it later if so anybody so desires. As I mentioned there are two different calendars. There is a calendar of when money will come into the TIF account based on your estimates of private economic development and then your calendar for infrastructure project spending. If those sync up well, this can be funding. In other words, as the money comes in, you pay out the infrastructure cost. That is pay-as-you-go funding. The TIF revenue comes in and then you will need to seek financing. Financing is simply a lending or borrowing. They can be in terms of the loan or bonds sold to investors. This is just a list of things you should think about. It should be longer than the financing. It. Keep in mind. These other things are pretty boilerplate. You can look at them later when you download the presentation. Vetting that concludes my remarks. I tried to go that quickly so we can spend actual time on case studies that have been very interesting. Thanks to your attention. I look forward to your questions at the appropriate time.
Great, Rick. Thank you very much. Anna, can you open the phone lines to see if we have any questions over the phone? For those who are logged into your computer, feel free to provide a question in the chat pod. Just as a reminder, we will be posting the PowerPoint presentations. It will be later and it will be within a download pod for you.
Once again that is * number one if you would like to ask a question over the telephone.
There are no telephone questions at this time.
All right. Why don't we move on to our next presentation. During this presentation if you have any questions for either Rick or any other centers please feel free to put it in the audio chat. Our next presentation will be by Tim Corcoran and Michael Divita. They will talk about the initiative in South Bend, Indiana. Timothy director of planning for the city of South Bend with over 14 years of experience in the field of urban design and town planning. Before this he was an urban designer in Sydney, Australia where he worked on a wide range of development issues. Joining team will be Michael Divita who is a principal planner with the city of South Bend. It is nearly 20 years with the city have implemented nationally recognized projects, neighborhood planning, streetscape implementation and zoning reform. Managed the city's Street smart program. Tim and Michael, take away.
Thank you very much. Thank you to the Department of Transportation for having us here today and especially for us the secretary giving us a shout out. That is always a neat thing to here. Today we wanted to talk about three different TIF projects in the city of South Bend and how they have affected our city and how we use those TIF projects to capture value. One of the things we were asked us to talk about some of the lessons learned. Without getting into a lot of detail specifics which we could do during the Q&A, one of the lessons we have learned is urbanism equals value. The projects we are going to talk about today are ones that really drive strong urban values that relate to strong rates of return and value back to the community. A little context about South Bend. The towns formed on the South Bend St. Joseph's River is how we got our name. The city is built on a solid grid structure pre-automobile. We have a very compact city. Our city was and innovator in the history of Indiana and the nation. We have a lot of great companies that were innovating throughout the country and it helps the population grow. We grow up to about 132,000 people during this industrialization period up until about 1960 where we peaked. Then, what we all know is Studebaker, which is one of our major corporations went out of business and closed up shop. We also had suburbanization start to really take off in the United States. We decided to tear down a lot of our downtown. All of these things these macro and micro economic sources really served to damage our city. We saw population decrease of over 30,000 people and it really sort of representing much of what people consider a Rust Belt city. We want to use our value capture techniques to really reverse some of those negative trends, the negative postwar trends. This is a map of every parcel in South Bend County and the colors represent high to low values. The dark colors are the highest value parcels and the green of the yellows on the lower a value parcels. When you really look at value you really need to look at it in a value per acre way. You can really see where the value is. This shows value and this is value per acre. You can see the value per acre is where the urban areas are. It really starts to highlight that. When you project that vertically on a graph you really start to see where is downtown and where are high urban areas. These graphs were done for us by a company called urban three do a lot of this value breaker analysis. That is where these images come from. We want to highlight today for you three projects. The first is our downtown smart Street project which was all really about reversing the urban renewal trend where we tore down a lot of buildings in downtown and how we are reversing that trend. We are also going to speak to you about what our Western Avenue project. This is really about equity in a weak market area where we have done a lot of work in a predominantly Latino community. Finally, Eddy Street Commons which is a public/private partnership with the University of Notre Dame. With her that I am going to turn it over to my colleague Mike Divita to go through the smart streets project.
It was a two-way conversion and streetscape project in downtown South Bend. Downtown had one-way streets stoma in early 1970s which were dominated by north-south peer of major streets. Both were designed as highways with 4-5 liens of fast-moving traffic. Planners and engineers thought this was a good idea for your telling the movement of cars but it really did not serve the city well. This approach divided the riverfront from the rest of downtown. It made downtown not inviting to people so the city became largely devoid of street life. As such the street stunted economic development. It is really a need to make changes to them to make it an urban place that was more attractive to people and projects. This worked. To remedy the the failing infrastructure it would cost more than $20 million. With the city having an annual base capital budget of around $5 million and a general fund budget of around $60 million at the time, the use of TIF was necessary to complete the project. The city developed a plan for the streets and started implementing preliminary phases in 2014 with the headline project done in 2016 and 2017 when the streets were converted to two ways. 16 blocks of streetscape meant improvement gave narrowing the streets enhancing sidewalks, adding amenities for bicycling. That project took South Bend from environment like this. It took it into something more like this. From having this kind of experience along the riverfront to this. Then from this kind of place prioritizing cars to prioritizing people. One that even provides space for special events and place making opportunities. Before even then Mayor Pete could cut the ribbon on the project we saw and development begin to happen. There was the first new hotel in downtown into generations. A $12 million investment that cities tallest building which was then under foreclosure was renovated into a hotel and residential spaces at a $50 million investment and under office building was converted into an apartment. And $8 million investment in an old hotel that largely sat vacant for 30 years was converted into apartments. A $12 million investment. South Bend also saw its first new class a office space downtown constructed in 20 years and $20 million investment. There were smaller projects too such as the renovation of the building into commercial space and residential units at a $6 million investment. The smart Street downtown was a $21 million project largely financed by a tax increment financed backed bond payable back over 20 years. It used a long-established district that are ready covered the downtown area. When the project was announced the initial implementation happened we immediately saw about $100 million in private investment made downtown including hotels and hundreds of apartment units. Property value has gone up and our TIF revenue the value captures through property values and property taxes that fed the TIF. Prior to the project in strong economic times nationally the private investment numbers really were close to zero downtown. The second place we will look at is Western Avenue. It is another smart streets project. Western Avenue runs through a heavily Latino and African-American neighborhood on the city's west side. Is the commercial and cultural center for the city's Mexican and Latino community. It is an area that had seen disinvestment in recent decades. All the buildings were slowly being fixed up here and there general state of disrepair that was on the area really encouraged investment in this low income area. Here also the streetscape project was completed in three phases between 2015 and 2019 to go from this type of environment to this. The project. With other business development project programs and has led to new businesses and building rehabilitations especially some of those smaller scale entrepreneurial type projects in the neighborhood. This particular project was $7.6 million sitting investment over three phases using TIF funding as pay-as-you-go. The parcels on Western Avenue were outlined as a part of a court ordered planning process that led to the scape project being prioritized. The value in new businesses and decreased vacancies that may be the biggest difference is a striking reversal of what was a negative perception of the area previously into something more positive. I will send it back over to Tim.
Thank you, Mike. The final project we want to discuss today is an area called Eddy Street Commons. Eddy Street Commons is an area that is located just south of the University of Notre Dame and the orange area you see on the screen pay attention said that as this is where the new development happen. This is what the area looks like in 2006. The city and the University worked together to begin planning for a future mixed-use development in this area. In 2011 new streets were built and the city's portion is in the Asterix area in the middle of the orange box which was a parking garage. The city used a TIF backed bond to build a parking garage and working with the University and they really began to develop this mixed-use project and a neighborhood. Over time you can see the area began to develop more intensely through the 2000's and 2019 phase number two of the comments was built. All of this extra development is being built based on our initial investment in the area. Up until today in 2021 the final phases are happening in the lower area of the orange rectangle where you can see some of the final development starting to be built. We are getting a new grocery store there. It is a Trader Joe's. Obviously the city of South Bend has now made it. When you have a Trader Joe's you are back on the map I think. This is what the area looks like today. New streets leading to residential office and commercial uses. New vibrant Main Street that helps connect the University into the neighborhood and eventually we cope as a catalytic way too better connect physically the University to downtown South Bend. They project was the city built a large parking garage that helped catalyze the project. It was a $36 million investment in a TIF backed 25 year bond. With that over $300 million in private investment has happened. 200,000 square feet of commercial space, 800 housing units and not only that but the level of increase in property values around the TIF district has also increased. It has had a catalytic effect on the neighborhood around it. In 2016 going back to some of the urban reanalysis we did the value per acre analysis for South Bend. As you can see on the screen all of the value of the entire city was about $3.6 million of assessed value. The purple areas are the highest per acre value with downtown in the Street Commons with two highlighted areas. I want you to pay attention again to the orange box. In 2019 those areas not exclusive to those areas that we added over half $1 billion of assessed value. You can see very clearly the effect of these projects and what they have had on our city. The TIF backed bonds really are great ways to capture the value, reinvested back into your community to encourage more economic development opportunities and projects. We thank you very much for having us here today. We look forward to your questions.
Great Tim and Michael. Thank you very much. I am looking in the chat pod and don't see any questions right now. For those of you who have a question referencing the South Bend project please type it in. Anna, why don't you open the phone line and see if you have questions there.
Again that is * one if you would like to signal. We will pause for just a moment.
There are no telephone questions at this time.
Tim and Michael Paul was asking how do you calculate the value.
It is value per acre diagrams.
Great. We look like we have multiple people typing. Why don't we wait just a second for those. Actually, while we are waiting for some people to talk I'm going to introduce our next speaker. We will address these questions and then we will hear from Jim. Jim Bennett the city manager in Maine. He will soon begin his 40th year in local government all in Maine. Over the time he has served as municipal manager for eight different communities in Maine. He served multiple leadership roles over his career including being the 101st president of the international city County management Association. He will be sworn in as the main municipal president in September. Let's see if we have any more questions. Peter said assessed value is done by a tax assessment. That is for property taxes. Is that the way you do it?
Yeah. Our tips are based on property taxes. Those are assessed value based on property taxes.
Okay. Great! Why don't we move on and listen to Jim's presentation.
Sorry to interrupt. There was a question about anti-displacement strategies. I don't know if you wanted to give them a chance to address?
Lisa asked whether any anti-displacement strategies in these communities?
Sure. Much of the property that was used to develop the Commons area was owned by the University prior to development. Some of it was even wooded area. There was some displacement but not a lot. It seems -- given the amount of development that has happened the amount of displacement with low. There is even strategies to work with the Housing Authority to establish lots within the neighborhoods to go to low to moderate income residents. Those have also been developed. There are a few more to go there as well. The University has also been working on a strategy to help low and moderate income neighbors within the surrounding neighborhood they were to fix their homes as a way to keep people in the neighborhood. They are very much aware of the effects this type of development can have. They are also very cognizant that they want to keep the neighbors who live in the area to be able to still live there. There are a lot of little strategies and some larger ones we have been using to try to keep residents in the neighborhood.
Great. Thanks! I think we are getting a couple of more questions but I want to move on to here. I think this is a very similar type of project. Jim, why don't you do your presentation and then we will make sure Dan and Mr. Hamilton answer your question at the end.
Thank you. I appreciate that. You're going to hear from the Northeast guy I apologize for the accident right now. What we did here is we combined TIF with P3 project I partner. We will talk a little bit about that. Let me set the stage about the community. It is the six largest community in Maine. It sounds like a lot but it is only 21,526 people. You will notice we are about 15 minutes South -- 15 miles south and 30 miles north of the New Hampshire border. We are he really old community. 1616 the first European visitors came to Bedford and started a little bit of a village. It didn't last. Somehow 1620 became when America was discovered but 1616 Maine so you can correct your history books. Is a blue-collar community. Our first mills were built in the 1820s. In 2014 the community decided it needed to change its reputation. It made a really bad public policy decision in a lot of have it trash incinerators being out in the middle of downtown. Anyone who knows about anything about trash incinerators, they are not attractive to people in business. In 2014 the city bought all of the -- but out the incinerator and tore down. That was a large taxpayer in the community and it was certainly a lot of controversy at the time. We are now in the midst of pretty tremendous transformation of downtown. Quite frankly it is considered one of the best places for investment in the community. I think the most important piece to mention is 25 years ago I did my first TIF. I had been involved with about different -- 30 different kinds of tips in the community and I had the opportunity to do some innovations and certainly this private part -- public partnership is the --. We do everything in-house except for the legal aspect. Here is the challenge. Here is a picture of downtown back in the day. How was the community going to fund and actually create the necessary infrastructure to support the conversion of this a vacant industrial mill downtown? The interesting thing we had over 5000 people that worked in these meals. In the community there is only 21,000. It is about 22,000. The vast majority of those workers walked to work and walked back. It was not designed for automobiles. We do not have the ability -- property taxes paid basically for everything other than what the state gives us. One of the perceptions is any investment in downtown would cause higher property taxes for the rest of the residence. Really to support the mail and the business owners. The other challenge? We can't borrow any money without the citizens referendum. For many that have been involved we are trying to deal with the first infrastructure. Here is the project. Started with a parking garage as a part of it. You will see the parking garages in the middle. This is the redevelopment plan for what used to be the lot that held the trash incinerator. $21 million to build that garage. A $3 million expansion of the Riverwalk which you notice as identified in this location in front of some of the mills. The way we were going to pay for that is through parking fees, the test in potential assessment. Happen to think this may be one of the first ones in new England. What are the details? We hooked up with Treadwell Franklin infrastructure capital. They are the lead project developer. Number infrastructure group is a company based out of England that ended up being the equity sponsor. A local bank, Gorham savings bank became the project lender. The project took a parking garage that we had designed and used money to pay for the design but we had not figured out how to finance that. We were having challenges. The parking garage is as you know usually, unless you were paying ridiculously high prices for parking it would not support the debt along with the operations from just the users. The city ended up, through my work and working with some of the principles that basically said let's see if we can figure out how to do this P3. In the end, there was an agreement where they would finalize the sign most of the risk and reward was with a private partner. They would provide us the Riverwalk to our design were $3000 if we hadn't got the permits which is the case. The cities application was to provide annual subsidies be via the TIF. That was really important as we went through the project because that would ensure the general public, because of the revenues through the downtown TIF coming into the community, that those payments were less than the revenues that were coming in through the TIF and the forecast. We are short residence their property taxes what go up. parties agreed to what the pocket revenue would be. We agreed with Treadwell Franklin how much would we charge to park in the garage. They would have to make up to the 100% level. If at any case they received 110% of the parking revenue in any given year they would have to pay the city back for all of the excess over the 100%. It is really this interesting model we used in whether to put this together. With my closing comments in terms of what does this mean for the community and how did TIF fit into this unique marriage between the P3 project and what we are trying to do. Our TIF is outperforming its original projections by 583% or over $70 million. Since 2015 when the city came in and bought the incinerator and tore it down we have been able to do rehabs. We changed much like our friends in South Bend to make it focused and try to enhance that and go back to our roots. The community was predominantly a pedestrian community. It provides the subsidy a shield. In terms of property tax impacts of 2015 and decision to tear down the incinerator and make these investments, our downtown value has gone up overall by 47.8% or $35.8 million. The medium single-family home in our community is paying $48.45 less in taxes today than they paid in 2016. This strategy has not only been great for downtown in terms of jobs and revitalization and newspaper hours and TV stations in the Boston TV stations coming in and talking about this renaissance in the community. It is also great for the single-family property taxes. People are no longer making funding in the community. We are reading about how cool the community is. It has really been a great success in a lot of ways. Overall it is approved by 211%. That is kind of the quick version of our story. We would like, if you want, to pose any questions for James in the chat pod. What I am going to propose we do is move on and have right now our final speaker and he is going to talk about the South Dakota TIF project. Toby Morris is a senior vice president of public finance with Colliers Securities . He has worked exclusively with South Dakota industries in the state of South Dakota to structured that, past referendums, develop finance plans and help achieve economic development goals. Toby, take it away. After Toby presents, we are going to have about 20 or 30 minutes for general questions for anybody. We encourage people to put into the chat pod any questions we have for our speakers today. Toby, take away. thank you. yeah. The discussion today is what I want to focus on is one of the greatest public/private partnerships we have had here in the state of South Dakota. That evolves from the local level, the city and the county, the economic development group to the state of South Dakota and to a corporation that came into South Dakota. To give you a historic overview -- 2010, we started in 2010. It seems like yesterday. Dakota Plains is a joint venture between two very large agricultural corporations. What they wanted to do was create a shuttle loader which is really a elevator. It is very large. The total estimated cost we were looking at is 40+. That is on the construction site. As anyone knows when you work in a rural area it can make or break the project on that part. As we look at this, one of the problems I said is we have the impact to the roads. The underlying problem is when you have large corporations owning a business in South Dakota and other states you find the local government we went along to show what kind of impacts we were going to do. As you do these you start picking up more and more costs. A lot of the times if you want to kill the project the best way to do it is delay a project. We were starting to get really delayed on this. That is when we started looking for a lot of help from the state of South Dakota and the local economic development group on that. What we would send to is the omega side. It offers something very unique. That was access to their real.
If we knew that were to happen to other companies which is a huge investment in itself other companies would not have to put in the capital could create a real park with that. Here is the map that shows you. You look at the top center you will see it is very rural. A lot of people would say why did you pick that site. That is a crossroad as well as the broom to northern. It was a very pivotal part in very advantageous location to be able to use a short line as well as the power of the Burlington Northern. You can see how the junction with two rail lines coming in right there. What is critical for us we are not too far away from Suda city which has every carrier down there to access that. Find the leak, when we start to make a lot of progress the incumbents were not eellike did. Once we have the progressiveness of the new commissioners coming in, they were approved to finally rotate was chosen. This is the pivotal piece that really came into play. It was the tax increment district. We apply to the South Dakota Department of Transportation. What I did, I am a dead guy. I issued it but I needed a nonconventional way to access this TIF. I knew over time it was going to build up but I couldn't show on paper up front that it could possibly amortize. There was a lot of risk with it but at the same time I thought the reward but would be greater going down the road. What had happened is there is no other resort for us to do that. The South Dakota Department of Transportation and wonderful people came in and they made a loan on this very favorable 1% interest. Anyone who has ever financed a TIF, as it gets going our taxes are paid in the rears, it is assessed in 22 and paid in 23. That accrued interest can really start eating a project alive. With the Department of Transportation on their loan, during construction they had it at 0%. Once construction was over it was that 1% going forward. What happened here for the security as well is we have more than a TIF. The county came in and they were the applicant and borrower. In the backstop, what I had is I had Dakota Plains and they would guarantee the loan if the TIF funds were insufficient for the debt service. I felt I had a pretty good collateralization and I had a strong private partnership to work this through. The interest rate again was 1%. Starting out right off the bat we had our first payment due in 2018. We created 16 of $334,340. The other development we had here as well is we talked about the mega site that was to be created. How were we going to get this to be more than one entity? We had all of this money into infrastructure out there between the roads and everything else. Just the infrastructure alone is probably 15 million when we include the rail loop with that. Not only that but we made more increment and development to pay that 334,000 amortization payment. This is how we looked at the potential price. The local development group option land on the left which would be to the west, we had engineers come in and look into what were the best layouts with a. When you create a tax increment district, a lot of times it could be a single source or a single parcel. What I ended up doing is creating a tax increment district two take into account the payback that D.O.T. loan. Not knowing what was going to happen but at least not missing out on the opportunity. As we have some political issues up front I didn't want to take that chance down the road if in case those County commissioners were unelected and a new group came in. Here we are in 2018. We fell short about 180,000. Dakota Plains made the debt service. 2019-2020, our revenue caught up. We then had an additional 94,000 on top of the 334. What had happened during that time is we recruited a start up factory. What I came in I think you can park a 747 and there it is so large. They have since obviously since paying their taxes that is going to the repayment which is essentially going to go to and amortize if that is a word to say and pay down that loan so that when the balloon payment happens and we have to refinance it it can be done in a very conventional way. This is what Dakota protein looks like here. I said this is the inside here again. Just within two years we have about a balance of 6 million. We are down to 4.9 million. If I can say the most important thing with the TIF is the interest rate that accrued interest that can eat you alive and if it wasn't for the progressive folks at D.O.T., we wouldn't have ever had this project in place. Since this has come into place, this is where the D.O.T. alone stands. We have other buildings coming in. I am projecting an ending balance in 2020 three about roughly 3.14. In six years, the payback shows the power of the interest but making certain when you create a tax increment district you focus a lot of tension on their to increase the value of where it goes. Our tips in South Dakota is based on new construction. We are not able to TIF an area of existing property. It is everything again. What we also did to help this out, our governor in 2017 designated as an opportunity zone I would say doing a lot of economic development infrastructure is the biggest impediment you will run into. One to get that in it is truly just a great asset to have. We have over $2 million in payroll at this site. This is what it looks like today with the way they are now. There will be another company location within three months. They are finalizing some of the purchase agreement of that part. I will pretty much conclude with my last site. Because of what D.O.T. has done we are very heavily based in South Dakota on agriculture. The more competition you can create it affects which essentially puts more money in the agricultural community. We have seen that roughly there is about $75 million of investment that has been put in there. One of the key things for us is unemployment. When you can have $2 million in payroll you probably have about 40 FTEs that are down there at that site. It really speaks volumes. I don't know if any other states create a program like that. Just as a quick dry note, one of the other presenters ask did you have this program in place? The funny thing is, after we made the loan we found out we really didn't have the legislative authority to make the loan but in our state we are sort of get it done people. We had to go back to the legislature that year, pitted in the statute for them to be able to make this loan and so that is sort of an interesting note. At the same time it speaks to the progressiveness we have at the state level with our D.O.T. folks as well as everybody else involved. I don't have anything else.
Well great, Toby. Thank you very much. Why don't we open the telephone lines. Anna, if you can open up for any questions over the phone and if not, we will read some of the questions we have gotten from the chat and have a conversation with our speaker. Just remember * number one. There are no telephone questions at this time.
This one is for Toby. Curious to see if the South Dakota D.O.T. loan with by way of a state infrastructure length or another instrument.
We look at the state infrastructure bank and some of the federal restrictions might have taken too long. It may have been a little cumbersome. At the end of the day the loan was essentially made from the general fund of D.O.T. as we crafted this. Let's see. We have a question. How much do you anticipate realizing in cost savings as a result of using P3's? How were you able to construct additional capital project using the revenue that would have been used if not for the PIII? Also, did you encounter any resistance since it is a smaller town or community?
Let's start with the last one. Anybody who has ever built their first parking garage in the community knows resistance is absolutely a part of what will occur. The message of financing it, for those opposed didn't change anything. The use of the PIII wasn't really about cost savings. We traded off a little bit more it couldn't go any higher than a certain prize. That was all the city was going to contribute based on the set of essentially annuity payments or payments we would make over the 25 years. All of the risks were in the private developer. If they were able to get the project in cheaper they would make some money. If they couldn't and it ran over they would have to essentially eat that. I think in the long run we probably paid a little bit more but we don't have that note on our financial statements. I think it will end up being a footnote and I think in the long run it was the right solution for our community. Hopefully that answered all of the questions we were asked.'s we will the slides are available for the left here we also have the link in the chat pod for the secretary video for those who want to download that. What factors are considered in the feasibility study if one was performed? What role did Notre Dame play in helping calculate the expected demand? I know you put in an answer to the chat but I thought it would be worth verbally going over and answering.
As you wrote the response you want to take this one?
Sure! I guess in terms of feasibility the have the private sector development. Market study aspects of the feasibility behind it of what their product mix was going to be. One of the other key pieces a hotel project that was kind of to making financing work. That was a big factor once they got that and it was good revenue to support that TIF investment there.
I think on the hotel part I believe, correct me if I am wrong, but there was penalties in place at the hotel wasn't built in time in order to ensure they had their revenue to pay back that bond or to pay the payments on the bond. Also, that particular TIF I think like the example has outperformed its expectations.
Great. This question is for Tim. You answered this in the chat pod but I wanted you to expand upon it. Do you have any long-term monitoring plan to check in on the success of the anti-displacement strategies for example a two-year look or a five you look?
Of the three projects we highlighted the only area in which the gentrification or the anti-displacement question really applies in that the Northeast neighborhood where the commons is located. The Western Avenue project really there are many vacant lots. We are focused on rehab of existing buildings in the local community has been the ones that have done that. That is one of the really great examples where TIF has been used to allow for the neighborhood to capture in a sense themselves. A lot of the new investment was in the rehab of buildings that were vacant and buildings that were converted into apartment buildings and a couple of hotels as well. In the street commons area property values have really skyrocketed to a points where even our partners have been pretty surprised at what has been going on. A lot of this has happened over a very long period of time. It has been over a decade since the beginning of this project until today. A lot of the change in the neighborhood, while dramatic in these areas and has only recently started to trickle back into and around the neighborhoods. There is a local revitalization organization in the neighborhood. They are very concerned about these types of issues and are working with the city to figure out ways in order to make sure existing residents are displaced through increased property taxes. One of the ways they have done that is not only to partner with other CDCs to build affordable housing in the neighborhood but also to work with existing residents on a housing repair program with piloting right now as a way to keep people in their homes for as long as they want to be there. We do work with the organization on a monthly basis meeting with them to work on these other programs we just talked about.
Excellent! Jim, from the city of Biddeford's perspective, do you have any comments on gentrification?
Sure, Terry. What is interesting is when you about gaining value from a TIF particularly if it involves any residential area. That is how you get value. It is through what they pay for rent or what businesses are able to generate from money. It is one of those things I found most people really don't want to talk about when you are talking about an area you are trying to improve. Generally they are not run down because people want them to be run down. They are run down because the economics sort of forced them to be that. In Biddeford we expected a big bump but we were really quite surprised. The overall real estate boom going on in the country, people figured out you can go to a great place. You can look on the Atlantic Ocean because of the pandemic and still work from home. It has skyrocketed. One of the unintended consequences in one of the things we didn't really expect was how quickly it would change the cost structure. Quite frankly we are running around the backside trying to figure out how to deal with an issue we were not prepared for.
There is another question for you. Is the experience of this is something the city looking to replicate quick's
I think we will look at it again potentially as a get ready for the second garage. It is so brand-new that a lot of my counterparts suggest figuring out what we did here. I will be doing a little bit more of an in-depth presentation for my counterparts in August. I certainly think more people will pick it up now that we will have done one. There are so many advantages. When you combine it with the power of the TIF, I think I am kind of sold on it. I think it works.
Great. Rick, I wanted to ask you. Now that you have heard these three case studies and I know you had case studies in your printer which you are able to download. Any thoughts or comments about these three we just heard about?
I think the case studies that were presented here show these were well thought out. It was it just a slight overhang in. They develop -- they relied on underdevelopment that would not have happened that the infrastructure projects. These were prime examples of what they can and should be. I think they are great examples there. I think we show some examples of tiffs that may be have fallen short. And again, one of the things we talked about was the risk involved. Some tips were put in place prior to the great recession. As a result, some of these tips did not produce the tight and amount of revenue that they anticipated. Counties found themselves on the hook for making up the difference between what they anticipated and what actually came in. That is by you have to pay attention to the details. One of the things I go off in my presentation is again, TIF revenues highly uncertain when you are anticipating them. Banks, especially if you are going to finance this, banks don't like uncertainty. They are not going to be on the hook in case you're TIF does it generate the amount of money you think it will. They are going to look for some guarantee that they will be repaid. Some cases cities say we will pledge our full faith and credit because they were assured by the developers that would it be necessary. After the recession they found indeed they were on the hook. In some other cases, cities or counties created a special assessment district. A contingent special assessment district. The difference between a TIF and a special assessment district is while they are both similar that they both have a defined area within which the infrastructure project will benefit certain properties, in a TIF, people are paying the same taxes even if the TIF didn't exist. They are paying the regular taxes. They say we are going to create an assessment district that we would not use until the TIF does it -- what we expect. That is the only thing I would add to the discussion at this point. I really enjoyed listening to the cases and thought they were great examples of good planning and good implementation.
Here is another example. In terms of value do all of you just use value done by the tax assessor or are there other? Any lessons learned?
Certainly tax assessed value. At the end of the day you are trying to capture the value someone is paying taxes on. That is what generates the dollars.
I would just add. Look to the state enabling statute. In many cases I think most of what we talked about we have been relying on increases to support the TIF. In some cases income taxes. There are wide varieties that may be able to be used if the enabling statute allows it. Then, what you have to think about is given the redevelopment that we anticipate, which texturing or set of tax streams is appropriate for benchmarking and using the increment fund?
Anyone else want to chime in? If not, I have got a question. Do you think the types of infrastructure, traditionally provided streets, roads, sidewalks to make tiffs work will change as a result of customer behavior due to the pandemic or different commuter patterns due to more remote work? I am going to throw my two cents in. I hope the pandemic is behind us and we never see it again.
I think the answer to that is yes. That is the way our investment, based on change and maybe where people want to live and how they want to interact with the environment, some of the projects we spend money's on and they are a huge upgrade to our public parks and and $18 million investment we weren't planning these based on knowing or anticipating a huge event like the pandemic but what happened was we saw our riverfront parks and trails system be utilized into a greater capacity than they had prior to the pandemic. I do think that for instance the project is a good example in the investment for the public domain for people to enjoy is a good strategies for other people to use because they do drive value back into neighborhoods but they also become really great community assets when you are stuck inside and you can't have the social distance or talk to other people. That has been a huge benefit for us.
We have reducing a little bit of change. The TIF statutes in Maine are mostly economic development. If it doesn't pass that lends we don't get that change. One of the things we have initiated as a direct result is we now have a bill that just got past and went under the hammer. It now allows us to use a TIF to be able to use money on a project in one location and take the money and use it to subsidize affordable housing or workplace housing. Most people that are in any urban development or thinking about this if you end up in a place where you don't have -- in their that allows their workforce you create these other issues and they are pretty negative. Out of everything that has happened in the last year the Maine legislature has just allowed us to use -- from one location to the other location. That will continue to happen and in most locations they react to what the location is. The state level and local and state officials usually do react positively to request's from citizens.
This is Rick Rybeck chiming in. I think it is an interesting question about the pandemic. I think it is probably too early to know for sure what the impacts of the pandemic will be but I would look back in history for some lessons. I am reminded that during the 1950s when the interstate highway and federal subsidies of suburbs was at its peak, a lot of people thought they were absolutely. They were hollowing out and they were done. People were going to live in the suburbs and maybe people would work in the cities but they would live there. After 9/11 and people drove some planes into some downtowns, they were too dangerous and too much of a target. Everyone will flee to the suburbs and the small towns. Again, even with pandemics we have had bubonic plague's. Cities have survived for thousands of years. I think there is a pretty fundamental dynamic that makes them desirable if they are set up. I expect cities will begin to be focal points. I would count them out just yet.
Great! We only have just a couple of minutes left. Want to turn it over to pepper for our evaluation and wrap up. Pepper?
Thank you, Terry. We have another one coming up in mid July. July 14th. The topic will be transportation reinvestment zones. A really interesting variant on the TIF district that is currently authorized in Texas and Utah. It should be a really interesting discussion. Of course, the length there on the slide will allow you to register all of these remaining events in the 2021 series. I am going to pull up an evaluation window. I promised new information on how to request confirmation on participation today. A value capture. That is a value capture all one word. You send an email to that requesting confirmation and it will be sent to you. There will be some evaluations in the center of your screen. One or the other will work depending on how you entered the web room. We encourage you to provide feedback to us. You know we had some technical difficulties at the beginning with the video but we hope you got a lot of value out of the presentation that followed. To make it easier for this evaluation you can enter full-screen mode for that. There is a button toward the top of the evaluation window. It is the outward point Windows. That will open up the evaluation window there see you can select your choices more easily and also provide any textbased comment you want to provide as you click through that. I would just like to turn it over to Stéphon for some closing remarks.
Thank you, pepper. I wanted to extend on behalf of Federal Highway administration thanks to all of our presenters for great examples. That was a lot of great information on examples. There are a lot of important projects that have supported development outcomes for places that really needed. Excellent information. A really well done presentation. Just to reiterate apologies for technical issues we had at the beginning. Thank you for sticking with us through that. That is really all I have. I am just going to turn it back to pepper.
Great! That will conclude today's event. We will like to acknowledge the help of the Federal Highway administration's web conferencing office. We couldn't do it without them. Thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day.
Thank you.
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