As a follow up to yesterday's post about the Sentinel Towers TIF, sources close to the developer responded with some additional information about the project from their perspective. In the interest of equal time and fair play, here are some points they say should be considered:

• The developers did not ask for a penny from the taxpayers. They offered what the county says the property is worth. They ask for a TIF, but that abates only the increased value of the property created by the $50 million private dollars they are investing.

• Why a TIF? Economics. It cost about the same to build a 21 floor building here as in Nashville. Or Atlanta. But the rate you can get for rental or sale of space is far, far less. The numbers won’t work for a big building here without some incentive. The developers found a way to do that that (unlike many proposals) doesn’t ask for a penny. And we still pay the capital debt portion of the taxes in both the city and the county. The CBID levy is not abated at all. Every major building downtown (Riverview, FTPlaza, Bank of America etc.) has had public support, usually taxpayers paid for parking and/or land. Taxpayers don’t shell out a dime in this proposal.

• The County ran a very open, public process. The public wanted mixed used and that is what the developers proposed.

Here is a Frequently Asked Questions document (PDF format) about the project.