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The North Platte offices of Educational Service Unit 16 sit across West 17th Street from the north end of a proposed 51-lot “shovel-ready” affordable housing subdivision envisioned by the North Platte Area Chamber & Development Corp.
Perennial disputes over tax increment financing in North Platte had to share top billing as City Council members debated the city’s two latest TIF projects Tuesday.
They also fielded objections from residents north of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, where a 51-lot “shovel-ready” housing subdivision is planned near Madison Middle School, Educational Service Unit 16 and River’s Edge Golf Course.
The council voted 6-2 to sell 13.2 acres of city land to the North Platte Area Chamber & Development Corp. and grant $1.87 million in TIF aid to install infrastructure.
An accompanying ordinance rezoning the site to R-2 residential won 6-2 first-round approval. Council members Donna Tryon and Mark Woods voted against both.
A separate $2.8 million TIF proposal to add streets and utilities at the chamber-owned Twin Rivers Business Park won 5-3 council approval. Councilman Ed Rieker joined Woods and Tryon in opposition.
Street and utility work at the housing site likely will start this fall, chamber President and CEO Gary Person said Wednesday.
The new subdivision will occupy the north half of 23 acres the city bought years ago for future North Platte Cemetery needs.
The southern 11 acres will be retained for that purpose, said Acting City Administrator Layne Groseth.
Chamber leaders put forward the housing plan last month amid the backdrop of one of North Platte’s most acute housing shortages since military members came home at the end of World War II.
City officials then set up North Platte’s first trailer park to buy time for homebuilders to catch up. That park along West 11th Street, south of the North Platte Cemetery, lasted from 1946 to 1948.
The city’s housing supply has fallen to crisis levels even before major job-creating projects like Sustainable Beef LLC break ground, Person and veteran real estate agent Nancy Faulhaber said at the hearing.
Person cited Lincoln County Board of Realtors figures showing monthly averages of 40 homes or less for sale between November and April.
“That’s about 20% of what it should be, if not lower,” he said, adding that the city issued just one single-family housing permit in May.
The picture is even worse now, Faulhaber said: As of Tuesday, North Platte had 17 homes for sale.
“That’s it. That’s all. There’s no more houses for sale,” she said. “We have to move forward. We are desperately in need for housing.”
With supply costs constantly rising, Person added, homebuilders are saying they can’t make any money building modestly priced “workforce housing” without lots, streets and utilities already in place.
“All we want to do as a development corporation is break even,” he said. “We want to get these lots in the hands of developers at the most nominal cost we can so the homebuyer in the end can benefit from the price savings.”
Prebuilt modular homes likely will fill most of the 51 lots, he said. But “stick-built” homes built onsite also can be done, and the site’s projected R-2 zoning would allow duplexes and townhomes as well.
Three north-side residents expressed varying objections during the plan’s public hearing.
Rick Miller, who lives within a block of the site at 1317 W. 17th St., said he doesn’t oppose the housing project but wanted to share neighbors’ concerns about traffic, drainage and safety issues.
“A lot of us are concerned we’re going to get more low-income housing out there. We do not want that,” Miller said, echoing comments at the Planning Commission’s May 31 public hearing on the plan.
Not from the chamber’s project, Person said earlier, pointing to its minimum $250,000 target price for homes built there.
Only three of the 1,705 single-family homes north of the tracks had 2021 taxable values of $250,000 or more, according to Lincoln County Assessor’s Office records. The top value was $251,740.
“I assure you this is anything but low-income housing,” Person said.
But adding more homes could worsen traffic backups when Madison parents drop off and pick up kids, Miller said.
Both Adams and Jackson avenues flood during downpours, and low water tables near the North Platte River plague existing homes’ crawl spaces, Miller added.
Terry Woods, wife of Ward 4 Councilman Mark Woods, echoed neighbors’ traffic worries. She joined former Councilwoman Rita Hernandez in decrying the idea of selling city land the cemetery might need.
Ever since she and Mark Woods moved to North Platte in 1986, Terry Woods said, “that area has always been considered expansion for the cemetery.”
“Sure, we need housing,” Hernandez said, adding she doesn’t oppose using TIF to build more. But the city makes money from selling cemetery lots, she said.
The city won’t even need the remaining 10 acres it owns north of the cemetery for some years to come, Groseth said early in the hearing.
About 2.7 acres of the 32-acre cemetery hasn’t yet been used, he said. It averages about 58 interments per year, including 27 full burials, an equal number of ash burials and four ash interments in columbaria.
If North Platte’s population should grow 40% to about 35,000, he said, the remaining 2.7 acres should last more than 33 years even if every burial required a full plot.
The 11 acres to the north would add 115-plus years of capacity under those conditions, Groseth said.
Rieker asked Person whether every future Sustainable Beef employee would be able to afford a $250,000 to $275,000 home.
“Some of them won’t,” Person replied.
He said North Platte will need even more single-family homes and apartments, more subsidized housing and new mobile home parks to fully meet demand triggered by the beef plant and the planned industrial rail park outside Hershey.
“It’s from A to Z, Ed,” Person told Rieker. “We’re working with developers on all ends of the spectrum.”
“You’re the first one that I think I’ve heard mention publicly about the possibility of mobile homes,” Rieker said.
In reply to a question from Tryon, Person said the city’s apartment inventory remains tight even with new projects. “Every one that’s coming onto the market is full, and they’re gathering waiting lists.”
The council approved TIF for Pacific Place Apartments’ expansion in 2019 and the emerging Victory Village complex in 2020.
The $75 million transformation of North Platte’s mall into District 177, narrowly approved for TIF last June, will add more market-rate apartments to the city’s mix.
Person’s evidence didn’t convert Tryon and Woods from their usual opposition to using TIF, though both joined the council’s unanimous Dec. 7 vote approving $21.5 million in TIF aid for Sustainable Beef.
“Well, you know I’m not in favor of TIF, right?” Tryon asked Person.
“And that’s very unfortunate,” he answered.
“It’s just hard for me to get my mind around helping a couple of developers,” she replied.
“You’re not,” Person said. “You’re helping the community.”
Tryon contended that housing developers won’t build entirely with their own money because they know TIF is available.
Woods agreed. “My problem with TIF is I think it is the influence of government money that raises the (building) prices and that as long as it continues, it’s a process that will eventually self-destruct.”
Though Rieker voted in favor of the chamber’s housing project, he rejoined Tryon and Woods in opposing TIF for adding streets and utilities at Twin Rivers.
Rieker asked why the chamber didn’t seek a city paving district to build new east-west and north-south streets west of Twin Rivers Road on the park’s east edge.
Property owners can petition for a paving district, with the city installing the streets and assessing properties according to their share of the street’s “front footage.”
By building the streets itself with help from TIF, Person said, the chamber can recoup its costs more quickly as new industrial and manufacturing businesses buy lots.
K&M Tire’s new regional distribution center at Twin Rivers came about because the chamber had a site ready to go, he said.
“The more we can accommodate and make things shovel-ready, the better,” Person said.
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