Still Finalizing Funding, POWERplex Gets Cool Reception From State Board
Date Posted: October 17, 2019
Posted In: Projects,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A state board wants more information before it agrees to finance $5.6 million of a proposed $71 million youth sports and entertainment complex at the site of St. Louis Outlet Mall.
Hazelwood officials, who are considering issuing almost $14.3 million in bonds to help finance the POWERplex youth sports project, pitched the plan to the Missouri Development Finance Board during its meeting Tuesday in St. Louis. They faced sometimes pointed questions from board members and couldn’t explain what one $3.2 million piece of financing actually was.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘skeptical,’” Hazelwood City Manager Matt Zimmerman said of the MDFB’s reception after the meeting. “I would use the word ‘curious.’”
Tuesday’s presentation to the board that controls state loan and tax credit programs was just an initial pitch and a vote was not on the agenda. But the discussion indicated that the POWERplex project — long pushed by former newscaster and area philanthropy leader Dan Buck — still has holes in its financing package 45 days after the developers were supposed to close on the transaction.
In July, Buck summoned media and officials to the site — formerly known as St. Louis Mills Mall — to declare the project was “finally going to happen.” He and Hazelwood officials, keen to repurpose a mall that has seen occupancy plummet in recent years, said then that financing was in place and set to close Aug. 30.
Redeveloping the mall has faced a major obstacle from $37 million in outstanding bonds issued by a Transportation Development District, or TDD. As vacancies at the mall rose, the district struggled to service that debt. Hazelwood and Buck’s team were able to negotiate a $10.5 million buyout of the bondholders, with the money coming from new bonds backed by a Community Improvement District, or CID, established on the site in Hazelwood.
But Buck told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday that the new CID bonds’ buyers, identified in MDFB materials as New York-based Rosemawr Management, asked that a CID also be established covering the project’s footprint in nearby Bridgeton, where some of the complex would be located. Bridgeton has also agreed to allow Buck’s company, Big Sports Properties, to use some of its baseball fields for tournaments.