Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: News

Mayor John Inyart discusses the series of grants that were approved to businesses in the city's tax increment finance district Tuesday evening at the City Council meeting. (Karla Browning / The Daily Eastern News)

The Charleston City Council approved nine grants to businesses in the downtown tax increment financing district Tuesday.

The TIF district, which the city established in 1987, is designed to spur development around the courthouse square.

Under TIF, any increased property tax revenue in the district goes into a special fund that is used to give loans and grants to help businesses improve their properties.

"All of (the grants) have to do with repairs and upgrades they are making to their businesses," said Mayor John Inyart.

Those upgrades range from brick tuck-pointing for the Charleston Area Chamber of Commerce building at 501 Jackson Ave. to power washing the Ealy's Real Estate building at 700 Jackson Ave.

Under the grants approved by the council, business owners must pay for much of the upgrade costs.

"In all cases, these people are providing matching funds and, in some cases, they are providing more than matching funds," Inyart said.

The grants could amount to as much as $62,600.

In the coming weeks, the City Council will vote on over 20 separate TIF grants, which Inyart said will cost the city roughly $250,000.

The planned upgrades will cost businesses and the city about $650,000 in total.

The council also voted to buy a $60,000 control panel for a sewage pump station near Reynolds Drive.

Pump stations lift sewage so it can flow downhill through sewage pipes to the city's wastewater treatment plant.

The current control panel has broken down several times over the past year, Inyart said.

Although city workers discovered the malfunctions in time, such breakdowns could cause sewage to back up and leak out of the sewer system and into the ground, Inyart said.

City Manager Scott Smith said the new control panel will better fit with the city's sewer system.

"This piece of equipment will work with ... our new communications equipment," Smith said.


Joe Astrouski can be reached at 581-7942 or at jmastrouski@eiu.edu.

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