Prairie Village clears path toward Meadowbrook Park reality

Prairie Village is moving forward with the sale of about $19 million in tax-increment financing bonds for a proposed public park on the former Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club.

City Council members voted unanimously during a special meeting Monday to take the bonds to the market with a planned sale on Monday. The bonds will be used to buy 82 acres of the golf course from Van Trust Real Estate, which is pursuing its own $200 million development on the property’s remaining 45 acres.

The vote clears the last significant hurdle for Van Trust’s plan to redevelop the Meadowbrook site, which sits between 95th and 91st streets and Roe and Nall.

Van Trust, doing business as MB-18 LLC, plans build an 8,000-square-foot senior living center, 53 single-family lots, 70 twin-home units, an apartment complex with 280 luxury units and a 50-room boutique inn with 5,000 square feet of additional commercial space.

Besides buying the park land, Prairie Village plans to use the $19 million to build out streets and other public infrastructure on the property and help the Johnson County Park & Recreation District develop trails, playgrounds and other parts of the Meadowbrook park.

The city plans to pay off the bonds through tax-increment financing, or TIF, which allows a local government to divert all future gains in property tax on a piece of property to help pay for certain costs of redeveloping that property. In this case, the city will divert future gains from the senior center, residential areas and boutique inn over the next 20 years to pay off the bonds. This includes property taxes that would have gone to county government, the Shawnee Mission School District and other entities.

Prairie Village taxpayers are obligated to pay back $11 million of the bonds if the project fails to meet expectations while MB is responsible for the remaining $8 million.

Council members also approved an agreement to eventually issue industrial revenue bonds for the project, which do not obligate city taxpayers but exempt all construction materials used on the project from sales taxes. The developers have agreed to contribute those sales tax savings, estimated to be at least $1.7 million, to paying off the bonds faster.

A memo that City Administrator Quinn Bennion sent to city council members Monday said that the city and developer have already racked up $443,122 in fees from attorneys, engineers, financial advisers and other consultants for the Meadowbrook project, all of which will be repaid from the bond sale or the TIF payments.

In addition to the financing deals, the council approved an agreement where MB-18 will set aside up to $400,000 to pay for cleaning up fuel spills on a half-acre of the park property.

This story was originally published April 25, 2016 at 9:47 PM with the headline "Prairie Village clears path toward Meadowbrook Park reality."