CCSD weighing benefits of participating in Union Pier TIF

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The Charleston County School District has a few more weeks left to decide if it will participate in the City of Charleston’s plan to establish a Tax Increment Financing District at Union Pier.

“Our ability to get something of value up front that’s in excess of the revenues that we would be forgoing as a result of the success of the development is of benefit to us to consider participating,” said CCSD Chief Financial Officer Daniel Prentice.

Prentice said seeing benefits up front would make the district’s participation in this TIF different than those in the past.

A recent change to the district’s TIF policy allowed CCSD to negotiate an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Charleston to provide certain conditions if the district takes part.

Prentice said the district is considering a condition that would result in an estimated $13 million in revenue for CCSD up front.

“We’re still looking at a few conditions within the intergovernmental agreement that would cap our participation based upon the city’s ability to issue bonds to finance the public infrastructure at Union Pier,” Prentice explained. “Any additional revenue generated over what they need to pay for the principal and interest on those bonds would come back to CCSD immediately.”

Another request from the district is for the city to surrender 30,000 square feet of office space at 75 Calhoun Street. CCSD is headquartered at the downtown Charleston building, but currently shares it with the city.

Prentice pointed to the move as a way to save money because there have been discussions in the past about building a new central office space.

“As CCSD has grown over the years, our central offices have been split between multiple locations. We currently have an office at Bridge View Drive in North Charleston that houses all of our financial services and some other administrative services within the operations division so those offices would be able to move downtown. And then we have a number of mobile office trailers and kind of offsite housing of central offices that would be able to move into that two-story building on Bridge View Drive,” Prentice shared.  

The city will hold a public hearing and second reading on the Union Pier TIF plan on November 4^th which is the deadline for taxing districts like CCSD to opt out.

The idea for Union Pier is to transform it from its current industrial state into a major mixed-used development on the water.

“Because it’s a state-owned property, the revenue there is worth $0 right now. It doesn’t generate money for the schools, for the county, for the city, for nobody.  And in the future, there’s an opportunity for it to generate an immense amount of money,” said Logan McVey, the Chief Policy Officer for Charleston Mayor William Cogswell.

On Friday, CCSD’s Audit and Finance Committee voted to recommend the approval of the IGA, just one of several votes leading up to the public hearing.

Prentice said the CCSD Board of Trustees will make the final decision at the end of October.