A group of Haymarket businesses has announced plans to launch a more formal effort to oppose a downtown skyscraper project.
Calling themselves the Lincoln Haymarket Business Association, members said they want a seat at the table in the city's negotiations with developers of the Lincoln Bold project, a 22-story, mixed-use building on the northwest corner of Ninth and P streets.
Russ Bayer, who owns a building in the Haymarket, said that while the development group has talked to many business owners individually, "we want to be able to have this organization talk to them as a group."
Though the group has some long-term plans, "the most important thing right now is tackling and negotiating with Lincoln Bold," said Matt Taylor, who owns Tavern on the Square and The Other Room.
Lincoln Bold is seeking to build the 254-foot-tall building, which would include 36,000 square feet of office space on floors 2-5, 70 luxury apartment units on floors 7-15 and 33 condo units on floors 16-21.
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Taylor said the group's main concerns are parking, street closures and the overall economic effect of the project on Haymarket businesses. One estimate has put the potential loss to the businesses closest to the project at more than $12 million over the estimated 24- to 30-month construction timeline.
Dan Sloan, who owns The Mill Coffee & Tea with his wife, Tamara, said the project is going to impact Haymarket business owners "pretty significantly," both in the short term and long after it is built.
"We want to make sure our interests are recognized," he said.
Taylor said the group's main goal is to get the developers to move the project to another location, and he mentioned a city-owned lot at 10th and M streets as a potential location.
"The easiest thing is to move the project," Taylor said, although he conceded that's unlikely.
"We don't want to kill the project," Taylor said. "We want to move the project. If we cannot move the project, we want to work with the developers."
Steve Glenn, one of the members of the development group, said it has worked with businesses and is willing to continue to, but Lincoln Bold is not interested in moving the project to another location.
Glenn said the developers have already made concessions, such as proposing to pay for valet parking for Haymarket visitors during construction, and he said there also are talks about closing a smaller portion of P Street to affect fewer businesses.
But he also said he believes some of the opposition is disingenuous and people have a goal to delay the project, "with hopes that they kill the project."
Taylor said that's not the case, but he and his fellow business owners do feel like they have been left out of the process, with none of them even finding out about it until the Journal Star ran a story on it last fall.
He cited the fact that no one from the public spoke at a Nov. 2 hearing of the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission as proof that the developers and the city were not being transparent and had failed to notify those affected by it.
Business owners also have complained about the fact that the project is set to receive more than $24 million in tax-increment financing, which would be the largest amount any project has received in Lincoln's history.
Many have questioned why a project that includes luxury condos should get millions of dollars in city tax incentives.
Much of that money will pay for expenses such as environmental remediation of the site, which is now a gas station, but several million dollars would go to sidewalk, street and other improvements in the Haymarket. The project also would contribute more than $700,000 to the city's affordable housing fund.
Urban Development Director Dan Marvin said the owner of the site currently pays $8,900 a year in property taxes. Once the 20-year TIF payback period is over, its projected property taxes will be about $2 million a year.
"That to me doesn't describe a bad deal," Marvin said. "That seems like a good deal for taxpayers."
The TIF money is the only reason the developers have to submit the plan for city approval beyond getting a building permit.
Because they are seeking TIF, they had to go through several layers of review, with hearings in front of the Urban Design Committee, the Historic Preservation Commission, the Planning Commission and the City Council.
"This is a really great project for our city," Glenn said. "I'm proud of this project."
The project is scheduled for a hearing in front of the City Council on March 6, and members of the Lincoln Haymarket Business Association say they will be in attendance.