City Leaders Confident Review Will Protect City

Left: Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris. Right: Site of the proposed PDIG development

City leaders are expressing confidence that the review process outlined by Planning Director Tim Dempsey for the more-than-$100 million PDIG downtown project will protect the City from the risks about which some citizens have been alarmed. (See a flowchart of the planned process.)

City Manager George Lahanas tells ELi simply, "We believe the process outlined by staff adequately protects the City.”

Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris agrees, telling ELi, “The primary purpose of due diligence is to make sure that the city is not taken advantage of and that the taxpayers are not placed at undue financial risk.” She says, "The due diligence process has a number of steps to be completed before the development agreement is approved[,] as outlined in Tim Dempsey's document. This includes the use of both financial/real estate consultants and outside counsel.”

Goddeeris says that, “At each step, how we proceed will depend on the information gathered up to that point.” In the end, she says, “I will pay close attention to all of this throughout the process before I make a final decision.”

Councilmember Ruth Beier had said at the January 6 meeting of Council that she would call for a resolution for outside expert review. Ultimately she did not pursue that resolution, and tells ELi, "The intent of my resolution was to make sure that our development agreement and Brownfield agreements were prepared by experts. I think that Mr. Dempsey prepared a flowchart that includes review by outside experts partly in response to the [idea of a] resolution.”

Beier adds, “I think the city's strategy is to insure against failure and non performance regardless of the reputation of the developer.”

Mayor Nathan Triplett and Councilmembers Kathy Boyle and Susan Woods did not respond to questions from ELi about “due diligence” and PDIG.

The project as it now stands exceeds $100 million and is expected to have $32 million in public tax incentive assistance. PDIG is an unusually controversial developer because of the track records of those associated with it.

Dempsey has said at several public meetings that the use of performance bonds and a careful development agreement will be used to protect the city from risk.

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