Ogden Avenue is Brookfield’s commercial heart. The mile-long stretch from Custer Avenue to Eberly Avenue is lined with commercial buildings and businesses, from motels to auto body repair businesses to restaurants. Aside from the geographic coincidence of the Brookfield Zoo, it’s where the village derives most of its sales tax revenues and handles more vehicular traffic than any other street in the village.
But while Brookfield has seen its neighbors to the east and west-Lyons and LaGrange-complete significant commercial redevelopment along Ogden Avenue, Brookfield’s main street has more or less limped along.
As a result, the Brookfield village board in its 2007 budget, has included a $75,000 line item to begin looking at a tax increment financing (TIF) district for Ogden Avenue in order to help spur economic redevelopment there. According to Keith Sbiral, the village’s director of planning and zoning, village trustees could vote on moving forward with a preliminary redevelopment plan by the end of the summer.
A TIF district can help local governments revitalize areas by freezing property assessments within the district for up to 23 years for every taxing body except the village. As property values in the TIF begin to rise due to development, the village can capture that new tax revenue and use it to fund improvements within the TIF district.
All other taxing bodies, such as schools and libraries, can only tax properties within the TIF on the assessment set when the TIF was formed.
“A lot of towns along Ogden Avenue are TIF areas,” said Sbiral, who along with Village Manager Riccardo Ginex, has had experience with such a district in Downers Grove.
“They are not uncontroversial, but they are one tool in the tool chest [to help with economic redevelopment],” Sbiral said.
The Brookfield 2020 Master Plan considered Ogden Avenue extensively, calling out two areas-one at the eastern end and one at the western end-for significant redevelopment. At the eastern gateway to the village, the plan contemplates creating a retail shopping center on the south side of Ogden Avenue between Custer and Forest avenues. Meanwhile, the 2020 plan shows a commercial/residential development on the north side of Ogden Avenue between Eberly Avenue and DuBois Boulevard.
The trouble, according to Sbiral, is that there’s no realistic way, as things currently stand, to help make that sort of large-scale development happen.
“A TIF district gives the village an opportunity to steer [development] a bit and encourage it in some cases,” Sbiral said.
For example, TIF district revenues could be used to help developers complete environmental remediation or purchase and assemble properties for redevelopment.
“A TIF has the ability to make those work,” Sbiral said. “They’re big ticket items for developers.”
Sbiral cautioned that the Brookfield 2020 Master Plan should not be looked at as a blueprint for the future, but as a guide for the kind of development that’s possible.
“Market forces will have a greater role than any one thing,” Sbiral said. “The master plan provides a great vision, but I hope people don’t confuse vision with a blueprint.”
Just how the idea of a TIF is going to be accepted by trustees and residents is unclear. While trustees voted to include the $75,000 for a TIF study in the 2007 budget, they have not discussed the subject at all as a group. The village’s new Economic Development Subcommittee of the village board, which met for the first time on June 25, also has not broached the subject.
“As we go through this, we’ll have to educate ourselves on what it is, how it works and the potential pitfalls and benefits,” said Village President Michael Garvey. “This is the first step in what’s going to be a long process.”
In neighboring Riverside, a proposed TIF for that village’s downtown met with vociferous opposition. An advisory referendum last spring asking if the village should create a TIF was defeated by a 4-to-1 margin. Riverside eventually dropped the idea of pursuing a downtown TIF.
Asked if the reaction in Riverside gives him a little pause about moving forward with a TIF in Brookfield, Sbiral said, “I think it should give anyone pause. If we do this, we need to follow behind it. I think a lot of times TIFs are controversial, but a lot of times, they’re incredibly successful.”