The Pompano Beach CRA used the Florida Redevelopment Association’s inaugural Redevelopment Week, September 14 to 18, to put numbers behind what it has been funding downtown. The figures are a useful look at how public money is being used to move private projects along.
What the Pompano Beach CRA is backing
The largest is Old Town Square, a mixed-use development valued at $63 million and carrying 282 apartments, supported with a $7.8 million tax increment financing incentive. Tax increment financing is worth understanding, because it is how most of this works: the agency borrows against the additional property tax the finished project is expected to generate, rather than writing a cheque from general revenue.
A restaurant and bar called The Vault is going into the historic bank building in Old Town, the kind of reuse that is far more expensive than building new and therefore rarely happens without help; the CRA put in a $40,000 façade grant plus $97,000 in strategic investment support. 26 Degrees Brewing Company added a kitchen, a $614,000 project against which the CRA reimbursed $101,000, with a further $20,000 toward exterior upgrades. A kitchen changes what a brewery is — it turns a taproom people visit for an hour into somewhere they spend an evening, which is the sort of shift that keeps foot traffic downtown after six o’clock.
The pattern behind the numbers
“We’re extremely proud of these CRA programs, which foster strong partnerships and drive economic development in our city,” said Nguyen Tran, the CRA’s director. The common thread across all three is leverage: $101,000 against a $614,000 kitchen, $137,000 against a restaurant build-out, $7.8 million against a $63 million development.
These sit alongside the larger downtown redevelopment, where the city and CRA are working with RocaPoint Partners and builder Suffolk on a new City Hall and parking garage, with two job fairs held in August on hiring and subcontractor procurement. For residents, the near-term read is straightforward: more construction downtown for a while, and a different Old Town on the other side of it. Details on the incentive programs are on the city’s site.
