Logan • Logan City will give millions in tax breaks and waive millions in fees to aid a plan to tear down the Cache Valley Mall and replace it with housing and commercial development. It is the second tax break for the massive development in recent months.
The Logan Redevelopment Agency, which consists of members of the Logan Municipal Council, unanimously passed a resolution earlier this month that allows the project’s developers to forgo paying up to $10,010,000 through property tax increment financing — a subsidy that allows future property tax increases, up to a certain amount, to be diverted back to a project’s developers, according to Logan City’s redevelopment agency.
The Cache Valley Marketplace project would tear down and replace the aging Cache Valley Mall with a large, mixed-use development that would include 346 housing units — with 10% of those units being affordable housing units — and a 156-room hotel with commercial space on the ground floor.
The development would include a nearly 148,000-square-foot “big box” anchor store, but a tenant for that space has not yet been announced, according to Kirk Jensen, Logan’s economic development director.
In total, the project is expected to cost around $205 million.
In addition to passing the tax increment, the resolution says Logan City will either pay or waive other fees of up to $3.8 million. This includes waiving a little over $2.5 million in fees and paying up to $800,000 in legal fees.
Jensen said those fees include waste disposal and building permit fees, among other costs. The $800,000 for legal fees, he said, likely would be used to negotiate ending leases early for businesses that are still operating in the mall.
“Obviously the developer carries some of that burden, but the city was also willing to contribute towards the legal costs, meaning the lease resolution process, up to that cap of $800,000,” Jensen said.
The redevelopment comes as Cache County experiences a housing shortage crisis.
A study earlier this year from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah found the state had a housing shortfall of over 28,000 units in 2022, and that shortfall is expected to grow. Cache County will need over 11,000 new housing units between now and 2030 to keep up with projected growth, according to a report from the Cache County Housing Crisis Task Force presented to the county in March.
Woodsonia Real Estate, a company based in Nebraska that is set to carry out the project, will also receive up to $1.18 million in affordable housing reserves from the mall project from the city’s redevelopment agency, plus $500,000 from the city’s affordable housing reserve, according to the resolution.
Jensen said during the meeting on Nov. 7 that passing the resolution would greatly benefit the city, including the strengthening of the area’s tax base and a boost in new and affordable housing.
“This project will serve as a catalyst for additional development, and also just general business growth in that in that area of town,” Jensen said during the meeting.
In September, the Logan City School District also passed an agreement for its own tax increment financing deal to aid the development. In total, the city and school district’s tax increment financing deal bring Woodsonia’s total tax break to $13.8 million over the next 20 years, which is the term length for both tax increment finance deals.
It’s not clear when demolition could start on the mall, but it could happen as early as this spring, Jensen said.
“The developers (wanted) to allow the current tenants there, if they so choose, to operate through the Christmas season, which, you know, from a retail perspective is huge,” Jensen said.
Correction: Nov. 28, 2:25 p.m. • This story has updated to reflect the correct worth of the tax increment financing deal. The deal is worth up to $13.8 million.
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