What the city of Rexburg hopes to accomplish with a new downtown development

REXBURG — In a city where roughly 50 percent of the land is untaxable, making improvements that attract businesses can be difficult.

The city of Rexburg, in conjunction with the Rexburg Urban Renewal Agency, plans to build a multi-use parking structure that is part of a plan to increase tax revenue, without raising taxes, and could potentially bring hundreds of jobs to town.

“Approximately 50 percent of our land is off the tax rolls,” Director of Economic Development for the City of Rexburg Scott Johnson told EastIdahoNews.com.

The exempt property is public and privately owned. It includes city- and county-owned land, parking lots, fairgrounds, federal-owned land like the post office, schools (which includes playing fields), the public library, religious buildings and land owned by Brigham Young University-Idaho.

“That’s a real challenge when you’re trying to increase or even maintain your infrastructure,” he said. “So, the less tax base that you have, the less tax dollars that you have coming in — the more difficult it is to put in new infrastructure and to even maintain the old.”

He hopes the planned parking structure on the block south of Carlson Avenue and between Center Street and College Avenue will help remedy that.

“I do want to make it clear — we are not just looking at a parking structure,” Johnson said. “What we’re looking at is a mixed-use development that would include parking. We’re really looking at something that would have retail and restaurants and commercial space on the bottom. Then a few levels of parking. And you’d probably see some professional office space or even some living space above.”

It could also allow the city to sell off a number of city-owned parking lots for new development that would increase the tax base even more.

“We always look to increase that tax base,” Johnson said. “Let me make sure that’s clear. Not increase taxes but increase the tax base. So more property on the tax rolls actually helps us…It’s really a long-term and much bigger strategy than just a parking structure.”

The property on the block includes iSource, The Avenues, Soup for You?, The Cut Above, Cure Touch Massage, All Occasions, Allen Ridge Apartments and a university-owned parking lot. The city has already purchased multiple properties and is currently engaged in negotiations to purchase others on the block.

Does Rexburg need it?

Rexburg has a growing but fluctuating population between 28,000 and 32,000 residents, depending on the time of year and current semester at BYU-Idaho. This can cause challenges to planning for the future of the city.

“We anticipate (BYU-Idaho) to continue to grow,” Johnson said. “As that does, we have more and more of those individuals who come here who have said, ‘Hey wait, I like it here. If there were a job, I’d want to stay.’ We have more and more businesses saying ‘OK. Now we’re starting to recognize this is a big enough university and there’s enough talent that maybe we do want to have a presence in Rexburg.'”

For example, Johnson said technology company Navex Global is planning to come to Rexburg and bring with it 300 more jobs.

“How many of those (new companies) may start to come? We don’t know,” he said. “How many people are going to stay? We don’t know. So, you start adding the people that may stay and the jobs that may come and the increase in students — by about 2040 we anticipate (population) probably in the 60,000 range. That’s not that far off.”

Even now, with new jobs and more people, Rexburg is having problems with parking.

“Parking is horrible down here (downtown),” Devin Dial, owner of iSource, told EastIdahoNews.com. “I’m lucky enough that I own parking space in the back, but anybody else that works down here literally has to park clear over in the city parking over by the dentist office. It needs to be redone down here.”

Johnson said before more businesses moved to the downtown area, residents could rely on temporary parking.

“We really didn’t see the 9-to-5 or the 8-to-5 jobs,” he said. “The more we’ve seen of those come to the downtown, the more conflict there is with our retail, restaurant and service establishments who now don’t have the customer parking that turns over quickly.”

However, not everyone thinks building a parking garage in downtown Rexburg is such a good idea.

The owner of one of the shops on the block being purchased, who asked not to be named, said she thinks the city is ruining the charm of downtown by removing the old buildings. She said the changes made to Center Street were “horrible” and doesn’t want the same to happen throughout downtown.

Why build it downtown?

Johnson said downtown is a key part of increasing the tax base because the area offers a variety of advantages for developers, and it’s where businesses want to be.

“In the downtown, we actually allow higher densities,” Johnson said, “So, bigger and better development, which actually increases tax base significantly because we allow higher heights — we allow more dense development and those types of things.”

Dial said the Rexburg downtown simply needs new development.

“I’ve been here almost five years, and downtown is dying,” Dial said. “When I opened, Sammy’s (a milkshake and hamburger restaurant) was still open and there were tons of students walking by and noticed that I was here. Since they closed it’s died downtown. We just need a bigger draw and a better draw and more parking.”

Johnson said another upside to building downtown is the infrastructure. Roads, water, sewage and electricity are already there. Although those things may need to be upgraded in some cases, the city doesn’t have to install them from scratch, which makes development easier and cheaper.

Existing businesses

Although Dial says he is excited about the new parking structure, not everyone on the block shares the sentiment.

The local shop owner who asked not to be named said she is frustrated about the whole thing. She is currently renting the space where her shop is located and said she doesn’t know what will happen when she has to move out.

Dial said he is in a fairly unique position on the block because he owned the property where his business is located before the the Urban Renewal Agency purchased it.

Dial said he will move his business out in a year. He said the city has spoken to him about moving back into the retail space when the parking structure is finished.

“I’m more than willing to potentially come back depending on how long the projects going to take,” Dial said. “I’d be more than happy to come back downtown.”

What’s ahead

Johnson said the hope is to have the project completed within three years, but planning is in the very early stages with still more real estate needing to be purchased.

“This is not something that is a small project,” Johnson said. “This is part of a much larger and ongoing and decades-long project. This is not a magic or silver bullet. It is a component of a much larger strategy to make sure that we can increase that overall tax base and try to keep taxes low and still manage the growth.”