Why give tax breaks to Katz Drug Store luxury apartments when public gets no benefit?

The Kansas City Council will hear from city taxing districts and the public on Wednesday before it decides on a 25-year-long tax abatement deal to construct a $50 million luxury apartment building and preserve the facade of the Katz Drug Store building on the edge of Westport.

Why give away millions in potential tax revenues to build 200 expensive apartment units, a 175-space parking garage for the tenants and amenities the general public can’t use?

We are not against either development or historic preservation, though the 1934 Katz building at 3948 Main Street is not Independence Hall, OK? It’s not some architectural gem, but a big box store with a clock tower. And what would the public get out of this deal? Currently, not much.

A tax abatement incentive project that would, for more than two decades, siphon millions away from schools and other taxing districts should return some real public benefit.

A lot more than the restoration of a familiar clock tower needs to be on the table, like money to help with the affordable housing we desperately need.

Apartments that are described by the California-based developer, Lux Living, as “high-end” certainly won’t be adding needed affordable housing units to Kansas City’s market.

“We as a city have to start to negotiate better deals so that there is more of a public benefit,” said Councilwoman Melissa Robinson.

No kidding. Projects with tax abatement should be done to incentivize development in areas that are less attractive to developers, remember?

Kansas City long ago abandoned that view. The One Light and Two Light luxury apartments in the Power & Light District were of course built using tax breaks as incentive.

But there’s no reason to keep subsidizing established real estate markets.

The nearly four-mile southern expansion of the Kansas City Streetcar along Main Street should do a lot for any revitalization efforts in the south Midtown/Westport area.

And how does the streetcar expansion factor into the plans for the Katz building, anyway? The project would be located near the planned 39th Street streetcar stop. The developer did not respond to calls on Monday.

A study of the proposed Katz project to determine whether incentives were needed to get the project done concluded that it could happen with a 10-year tax-break.

Robinson says she supports redevelopment of the building with the 10-year terms recommended by the study.

But incentives are not the birthright that developers seem to take them for. We’d rather not forfeit tax revenues that should be going to our historically underfunded schools. And no, preserving a not-so-historic buidling at the expense of our future doesn’t strike us as a great bargain.

Kansas City Public School officials certainly plan to attend Wednesday’s 1:30 p.m. hearing to testify that if the council agrees to the proposed incentive terms for this development, it’s going to hurt kids in the district.

For years, KCPS leaders have argued that city leaders continue to allow needlessly over-incentivized projects in the name of economic development, while failing to consider the negative impact that has on the school district.

“Each dollar that goes to an over-incentivized project is a dollar that isn’t going to support important public services, including education in Kansas City,” Superintendent Mark Bedell told The Star earlier this month. “While we continue to stress that we are not anti-development, Kansas City’s children should not be bearing the financial burden.”

The district claims a loss of between $30 million and $40 million a year to tax abatements for about the last 15 years. That an overall loss of more than $450 million that could instead have funded our future. This is not even a close call.