Monday, February 13, 2012

Can a shrinking Lowes HQ anchor the Red Line?

Since the Red Line full court press started a month ago, the beacon of an ever expanding Lowes corporate HQ in Mount Mourne has been one of the justifications for the finance plan built around Tax Increment Financing revenues and Special Assessment District fees.  An ever growing corporate campus would spin off higher tax revenues for the TIF, and SAD fees would go up as well when as the campus builds out.  Today's announcement should have the Red Line consultants scratching their heads:

"Lowes offers buyouts to corporate staff"

What has me scratching my head are these questions.  What variables did the consultants have built into their models for the Lowes campus build out?  How long were they assuming this would take?  How much density and total square footage were they calculating?

After today's announcement, whatever assumptions the Red Line consultants started with, they should now be recalculated with the qualifiers "longer" and "not as much".

No comments:

Post a Comment