Birmingham City Council votes to approve incentives for Lakeshore shopping center with Publix

The Birmingham City Council voted 8-0 today to approve a package of financial incentives with a potential value of more than $3 million for a developer seeking to build a shopping center, including a Publix grocery store, at the intersection of Lakeshore Parkway and Shannon-Wenonah Road.

However, Councilor Lashunda Scales took the occasion to complain about what she said is a continuing failure by Mayor William Bell’s administration to aggressively pursue similar developments – including quality grocery stores – for Birmingham’s eastern section.

Scales represents District One and complained that her district, and Councilor Kim Rafferty’s District 2, do not get the economic development or recruitment help they deserve. “We are getting overlooked,” she said.

Under the terms of the agreement passed by the Council, the development company – IRC-MAB Birmingham Project LLC – will build a community shopping center containing a 45,600-square-foot grocery store, 22,400 square feet of inline and pad shop space and a 1.1-acre outparcel site.

The city will provide the developer with incentives not to exceed $3.3 million, payable in seven annual installments.

The first five installments are to be equal to the lesser of $500,000 or 50 percent of the city sales tax revenue generated by the shopping center.

The sixth and seventh installments are to be equal to the lesser of $400,000 or 40 percent of city sales tax revenue generated.

“How do we recruit businesses and decide where they go?” Scales said.

She said that District One, which she called the largest in the city, only has a Save A Lot grocery store.

“Your vote must not matter,” Scales said, referring to residents of eastern Birmingham, adding that the administration has not “advanced neighborhood revitalization” in her district.

Lisa Cooper, the city’s director of economic development, said that her department works aggressively to recruit grocers to various Birmingham neighborhoods, especially those qualifying as food deserts.

And she said they try to retain stores already in operation. “We try to provide incentives to keep them in certain areas, not just for the investment, but because of the convenience of constituents.”

Council President Pro Tem Steven Hoyt said the city should give incentives to companies that have “a real commitment” to the community and won’t bail at the end of the incentive period.

However, Cooper said that the city does have “claw-backs” in its developer agreements.

The agreement approved today is also “performance based,” assistant city attorney Jim Stanley told the council. “If they don’t generate the taxes to get the desired amount of rebates, they don’t get paid,” he said.

The incentives are paid annually, but each payment is to be based on a look back at the shopping center’s sales-tax performance for the previous year, according to Stanley

In response to some of Scales' complaints, and at the behest of Jarvis Patton, Bell’s chief of staff, Cooper said that Bell does not pick and choose which neighborhoods receive commercial developments.

Developers approach the city asking for help, and the mayor may have to decide which projects seem viable, but he “does not tell a developer or grocery store where to go,” Cooper said.

Councilor Jay Roberson helped recruit Publix for the project, which is located in his District Seven.