The Chattanooga Industrial Development Board (IDB) met on March 2, 2026, to approve a development and tax increment financing (TIF) agreement for the Northgate Mall infrastructure project. The meeting included public comments on TIF policy improvements, staff presentations, board discussion on financial due diligence, and a vote to approve the resolution subject to conditions regarding the developer’s standing with the Tennessee Department of Revenue. New board member David Hudson was introduced.
Call the meeting of the March IDB to order. Confirmation of meeting advertisement, and we have a quorum present. Thank you all for that. And before we get into the minutes and everything, I want to introduce David Hudson. It's his first meeting, newest member of the board here. So welcome, David. I'll allow you a few minutes to introduce yourself. So glad to be here and looking forward to serving with you all. Thank you. Thank you again. Welcome. Next, we'll move into the approval of our minutes from the February meeting. All those in favor? Next, I'll move into anybody looking to address the board this morning. Is there anybody here today to address the board? Last month I gave an update on our E2I2 project, a status update on the construction of that. And I have some answers for you today. I didn't have them in time to get them on the agenda, but I didn't want to wait another month. I wanted to make sure you knew what we were doing. So looking at just jobs that were created by the project, there were 39 local hires that the contractor and subcontractors put under this construction job. But the bigger part of this is the amount of investment that is was made with local vendors, whether it's material supplies, whether it's concrete, steel, things like that, equipment uh rentals and also equipment purchases like pumps and other things. That tolled over 39 million dollars. So 39.7 roughly million dollars has been spent with local vendors and equipment uh uh professionals to make sure that this project is getting off the ground. So that's a pretty significant amount of money. The uh our other project that we are doing in partnership with the IDB, uh the Class A Power Project will be similar numbers, but we're very early in the design phase on that. It's kind of too early to tell. Uh but that project is actually a larger um dollar amount and I and and similar construction. We're talking about large concrete tanks and pumps and things like that. So I suspect it's going to be rather similar in nature. Uh, we'll report on that as soon as we have that information. Thank you. Martin tell them that is regeneration of natural gas usage that you're talking about. Yeah, so the the Class A power projects is where we'll we will be taking the the methane that we already produce with our with our process and actually converting that to electricity. So that's actually going to reduce our energy consumption, reduce strain on the grid, and reduce our electric bill at the plant. So operationally, it'll be a reduction in our operational costs going forward, and also providing that stability for the grid in the area as well. So that's a it's a big project as a big impact, and it actually helps beyond our our fence as well. So thank you. You made a presentation to us about that a few years ago, didn't you? I did, yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Helen Burns Sharp, the founder of accountability for taxpayer money. I'm speaking of a si as a citizen and as someone who has followed Chattanooga's TIFF program during its 14-year history, and as a former community city community development director who worked on four TIFF projects in my career. I'm not anti-TIF. The city's TIFF policies have improved over the years. ATM has developed a short list of amendments we believe are needed to improve them further. I look forward to working with Sharida and Winston to see if they will become advocates for some of these changes. Now for a sneak preview, since the Northgate TIFF is on your agenda today, I will briefly refer to it as I make my comments. Two of the suggested policy changes that we're making is that we believe that by the time something gets to the IDB and to the city council, I don't want to say it's a done deal, but it's fully formed.