Distillery District moves forward

Barry McNeese has filed the first preliminary development plan for the Pepper Distillery property with city planning. It shows no new buildings and no buildings to be removed, but it does show a bus shelter and a revamped parking layout.

One remarkable detail about the development is that almost all of it is within the latest FEMA 100-year floodplain.

The property is everything south of Manchester St, from the Corman Railroad crossing to the Vulcan quarry entrance and a triangle of land on the north side, hemmed in by both the Corman and Norfolk Southern Railroads. Nothing new is currently shown as being built on the north side.

With the City actively looking for a location to move the recycling center on Thompson Rd., that parcel could easily be included in the Distillery District plans. I have been wondering why the parcel was left out of the TIF description as mapped below


Distillery District TIF form LFUCG Website


By rough calculation, this property could replace the area owned by the two railroads and the public rights-of-way, which cannot add to the value of the TIF because they generate no tax revenue, were it to be sold. There may be other information in play but it looks like an oversight on somebody's part.