Development watch: Hamilton Crossings

Two items on tonight’s agenda dealing with Hamilton Crossings. First, it’s been determined that the County will not be participating in TIF. Moving forward the township must now decide if we are. Tonight, the timeline for moving forward to a vote on this issue will be outlined. The specific decision will be whether or not to hold a public hearing. This consists of authorizing staff to advertise so we can conduct a hearing sometime in May. (I will post  relevant dates when set) If approved at the May hearing we would consider two items:

1. The creation of the TIF district.
2. If Lower Macungie is to participate in the TIF district. |

Both items would be considered as proposed ordinances. These ordinances if supported would then be advertised for adoption sometime in June. At the same time the project will continue to move through land development process.

My thoughts: I am heading into the next 2 months with the mindset that the developer and those who support the TIF must make a case for it. The prior BOC which I did not sit on publicly supported TIF. They did this via a resolution asking Lehigh County to participate. (At the time the public narrative was all 3 district, county and township were needed for TIF to move forward. Apparently that is not the current interpretation.) If I were on the board last year I would have voted against the resolution of support.
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