NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce CEO Debra Teufel is excited to see the development from the STAR Bond project that is going to happen in Hutchinson.
"Absolutely," Teufel said. "This one has been a long time in the making and we were all very anxious to get the final bow on this so we can get started with projects. But, you know, really the catalyst for so much of this has been what will happen with the Landmark project and Laura Meyer Dick and their development was really kind of critical to be, you know, a thing that we can hang our hat on that can be redeveloped in downtown as an anchor project. But alongside that happening was the city's plan for Memorial Hall and then a lot of planning over the last couple of years with the Cosmosphere around their remodel. All of those things moving in the same direction kind of led the community to a place that they said, okay, all of these things are catalytic and can have an impact, particularly on tourism and visitor activity and development downtown, creating momentum with the downtown master plan. It just seemed very synergistic that you put all of those together in one project and they are the recipe for a successful STAR Bond project."
The city is able to use three different areas of town to feed the repayment of the bonds in downtown and along 11th and 17th.
"The reason for that is that all of the STAR Bonds have to be repaid with a sales tax increment of new sales tax," Teufel said. "The city and the state had to embark on a study to look at where will this be most successful and where are we most likely to start generating additional sales tax as a result of those key projects. Also, because we are at a place that the new hotel and the restaurant adjacent to it have not been constructed yet, you can set those at a baseline of zero and all of the sales tax increment, and we're really talking then about the state's sales tax increment that gets pledged to this, will all be new dollars to then help repay those STAR Bonds. Yes, the area on 17th is because not only that hotel and the restaurant that will come with it, but there's some expected development, there's some locations along 17th that are there are some lots that we expect to have new development. And with all of those, coupled with the area around the Cosmosphere and then absolutely the corridor of downtown, really then create a new sizable sales tax increment from that state sales tax."
Making sure a STAR Bond can be paid back is a detailed process.
"You have to do an economic impact kind of predictive analysis of what will be generated," Teufel said. "That analysis started I'm gonna say almost a year ago. There was an economist Eric Lander that did that initial study for the state, and then these have to be vetted by the Department of Commerce. They don't take these lightly because if as you mentioned there have been some STAR Bonds across the state that haven't been successful, so the legislature looks at this program through a microscopic lens, and so Commerce tries to make sure that they have vetted every project well, and that's what they did on this, and the team from Hutchinson then once they had Laura Meyer Dick with her project and the city and the Cosmosphere all went together to the Department of Commerce to present their case, and then over the course of months the Lieutenant Governor signed off on that project as the Secretary of Commerce."
The intent is for the amount of the bonds to be around $10 to $11 million.