You can’t overstate the importance of downtown apartments — if you’re Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder.
“What this is going to have is a domino impact of the area for downtown, for the medical area,” Langfelder told aldermen Tuesday, adding that Maldaner’s restaurant owner “Michael Higgins is in the audience, but one of the things he always emphasizes is needing people downtown, and that’s 24 / 7. If you want to change downtown, now’s your chance. 136 units, market rate housing. So (developer Victor Salerno) is just looking for the green light to pursue financing.”
Aldermen, approving the “targeted tax increment financing” plan unanimously after Salerno agreed to a project labor agreement, groused that the developer’s agreement hit their desks only a half hour before the meeting started, but corporation counsel Jim Zerkle said the agreement is simply a “boilerplate,” and there would be many more chances to examine the proposal before any ground is broken.
To that end, Ald. Ralph Hanauer said – especially during the holidays – the matter could wait a couple of weeks. Salerno countered, “It’s this, it’s that. Two weeks go by, four weeks go by. Who knows? i don’t think any of us thought Russia would invade Ukraine last February. So the world’s – things can happen.”
He may have a point, but not many would have expected the Russia-Ukraine war to come up during a discussion of a residential project in downtown Springfield, Ill.
The “targeted TIF” would consist only of the property at Fifth and Madison Streets, set to become the “Lofts on Madison,” a six-story buliding with retail on the ground floor where a parking lot sits now.