Photo by Rachel Stone
Almost 4,000 new apartments have been built since 2012 or are under construction in the Bishop Arts/Lake Cliff area, according to the Oak Cliff Gateway Tax Increment Financing District annual report.
The district includes Bishop Arts as well as the Lake Cliff Park/Methodist Dallas Medical Center area, as shown in the map below. This “reinvestment zone” allows the City of Dallas to invest in development as well as infrastructure like curbs, sewer and storm drains, financed against future property tax increases those improvements bring.
Since 1999, the district has invested almost $33.7 million in development and infrastructure projects. The original TIF district, created in 1992, generally was the purple part in the above map, and the green part, Bishop Arts, was added in 2014.
Here is a list of all of the projects the district has funded since investing $34,811 into the Walgreen’s on Beckley at Colorado in 1999.
That last item, Gateway Oak Cliff, is the Catholic Housing Initiative’s mixed-income project, which is under construction on the site of the bygone Oak Cliff sub courthouse.
The district’s annual report also spills tea on developments it didn’t fund, as well as their estimated property values.
The above data show there are seven apartment developments currently under construction in the district, with a total of 1,289 homes.
Here are the data for apartment and condo/townhome construction in the district since its inception.
Development of other commercial property besides apartments and condos/townhomes has exceeded the district’s goals by more than 30%, according to the data below.
This TIF district has also paid for maintenance to the Oak Cliff streetcar, to the tune of about $950,000 over two years. And it is funding about $785,000 in improvements at Hogg Elementary.
City Council is expected to accept the district’s annual report at its meeting Wednesday. Find a pdf of the full report at the link below (it might take a few seconds to load).
