4.18.2023 Historical Commission

everyone thank you for joining us for the our monthly meeting of the Fall River historical commission the time is now 1 pm we're meeting today at the community atrium of government center it's also being reported on Fall River government TV also not to YouTube pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium

attendees are therefore advised that such reportings or Transmissions are being made perceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible can I get a roll call please

your responses present and Jason Bouchard and Rocky present so we have two open seats item number one on the agenda is to review and improve the minutes of March 21st 2023.

so I have a motion by Brick second by Connie I get a Roll Hall bill please

how do you vote on a minute oh all right how do you vote on the minutes and Jason Bouchard and Rocky yes on events do we have any citizens citizens input the next item on the agenda is number two uh notice of intent to demolish I received notification of demolition permit for 8 Road I inform us ing licensure register the building it's a not historical historical now to make way for a metal box

office book item number three of our course Fall River arts project here to they're seeking a letter of support for mural and Kennedy partner what am I coming up to the front and uh introducing yourselves and what organization you're with certainly great my name is Katrina Myers This is my partner Chandler Hearn we're with Fall River arts project at 505 Bay Street and we reached out to you guys to get a

letter of support to paint a mural on the Kennedy Park Maintenance building we've been in communication with the parks department as well as the Olmstead society and the Fall River Art and cultural Coalition and I should say the mural is of Frederick Law Olmsted who is the landscape architect who designed Kennedy Park and a number of parks around the city of Fall River we gave you guys copies of a couple of potential

mock-ups it will be a big black and white image to individual but we're working with the parks department to hopefully make something more colorful and engaging for the community we'd also like to incorporate a QR code to link to a website so people who visit the park and view the mural can get more information about Olmstead Fall Rivers parks and River's history as well we're reaching out to

the Fall River Historical Society to help us draft some sort of language that is written by a historian rather than me who likes to paint so we're looking for a letter of support Nancy Smith on the Parks Board is going to be approaching the city for permission to paint the building and we just want everyone's support in what we're doing we understand it's a historical site although the maintenance

building might not be of that significance but we'd love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you guys may have I think I heard you mention the QR code yes we'll explain that a little bit more because I know in the letter from the cultural Council that the requirement is that you need to address the Americans with Disabilities Act yes in these murals yes we're going to be including language

about Frederick Law Olmstead on the actual mural itself um and the QR code is uh I'm not sure if you guys are familiar it's that black and white image that looks digitized that you're seeing around more it's a perfect square so people who have cell phones that are connected to the internet can take a photo of it hit a button and be directed directly to a website uh we're still talk and talks

about whose website that would be it could be full River arts project or the city's website as well which I believe has um or will have that I know the city is developing a new website some sort of program to provide people who have seen difficulties with the information on the page through some sort of audio transcription of the writings this is all getting changed yes and at what stage

uh we have met with the park board I'd say several times since November for the first to sort of introduced the idea and the idea was actually uh put forward by The Parks Board because we said we'd love to do a main mural on the maintenance building and I think it was uh representative was it Mr Da Silva yeah who said Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Olmsted and we had actually been looking into the history of the

park because our location is right on Bay Street around the corner at 505 and was just interested in learning more about the city and what was going on and the farm that was there and from there we contacted the Olmstead Society or what was what were they called yeah it was just his 200th anniversary uh it's olmsted.org it is it's through the it's through the national parks I I got the names confused there

multiple Homestead organizations this is the federal um Homestead Association and they gave us some old images of the parks and we made those mock-ups which we brought back to the Parks Board and they said this is great we want to continue with it and we've just been in the process of dotting eyes and Crossing T's and telling everyone in the city what's going on so we can get approval from everyone just continue well

hope yes that is I actually Olmsted has done 13 uh different parks and smaller areas in Fall River it's one of the most densely populated of olmsted's work who did you know city um Central Park in New York the emerald necklace so he's you know grandfather of outdoor architecture so that's a really wonderful thing that the city has going for it and uh that's kind of why we thought of the QR code because there's

so much information we wanted to be a teaching moment of teaching and there's just so much to teach we get in there with brushes and do paragraph after paragraph We want it to be visual but then if somebody wants to dig a Little Deeper that all that history is there and maybe even get like a walking path between the parks like really integrate would love to but this is you know the

first step first step on a journey hopefully yeah so we're hoping we started arts project last year and last April so far we have hosted the Halloween parade which took place on October 29th and went relatively well we're hoping to go bigger next year it went well it went well we just want more more fans more everything and um but yeah we've been in communication with the city since then and figuring

out how we can contribute to the public art landscape of the city and we think murals are a great idea we want to do more of them we talk to the Fall River Art and cultural Coalition frequently and know how wonderfully the murals that they put up last summer were received and think they would just provide a great marketing tool for the city to really portray it in a positive light to

show people whoever visits to show the residents about the city's history and about a really wonderful attribute that the city has in Kennedy Park and all of the Olmstead Parks here and what else was I gonna say I think that's it for now

and a second by Elizabeth um

thank you guys

particularly

agreed what you're doing is gracious of you

thank you guys you know where the next board meeting the parks board meeting is the first of the month I believe it's the first it's the first Wednesday of every month and we need to present it to them for final approval but I think uh the sooner the better because I'm sure Mrs Smith would like to talk to the city so the board can finally vote and maybe we can get an answer

awesome thank you so much thank you very much yes definitely and we love your guys input on any other projects that we should possibly Undertake and want to learn more about the city and go to the Historical Society also history Buffs ourselves so you know and this beautification of the city I mean we live here right it's benefits everybody yeah and we're occupying Oliver Chase's treadmill right

now right now our offices yes and wanna do it justice so we just love to learn more if you guys ever have any suggestions please reach out this awesome thank you guys so much to meet you all

right so you want to move forward

okay uh by Rick and a second by Connie so we're going to move items number 14 to number four and number 13 to number yes we're starting to rock yes so that would be new item number four will be 687 High Street on the Leander Borden William Thomas House request the property is located in the highlands 40cc Local District hi hi maintenance definitely Android 687 High Street Fall River and Gail fatado 687 High Street

so we need to repair some leaky gutters they're all wooden gutters so we're just going to keep the wooden gutters and repair and Patch wherever we can the contractor suggested that we line them with copper and he said if you line them with copper then you make them last a lot longer so the section then has to be repaired is all around the driveway the rest of the house is in good shape it's

just where all the cuts are you know the bay window cuts that's where all the leaking is and a couple of them can be fixed but most that section might have to have a couple of pieces of wood replaced but they will be replaced with wood gunners I have a sample if you need to see I'll show it to you guys so so they're going to be all lined in the compound okay longer having

those under the shingles driveway sets so that would be if you're looking at the house to the right hand side if you're looking at Front Street all right so it's at the corner of French Street the driveway and the corner in the backyard okay okay so that's the area that that seems to do with all the cuts right so that's where the leaking is so the front of the house the High

Street side the long backyard because it's Federal so it's long on the F on the sides the two long ones are fine but they'll have a couple linings

yes so I have a motion by Connie for a certificate of appropriateness

right I got a roll call console yes yes okay and Jason Rocky yes okay so thank you we'll send you the certificate of appropriateness so when you anticipate starting the projects He the contractor said he would probably start the beginning of May to the middle of May somewhere in there he can't give me an exact date but when he dropped that off he said about three to four weeks um have you already gone on

for building department for apartment no no okay I know what's the right order oh sure so I have the certificate first to go get the so I think it's the other s and then I can do that tomorrow then

write a letter in this to the City Hall yes okay so it is tomorrow too soon okay try to get in there tomorrow all right really appreciate all right thank you hang in there all right thank you thank you all right thanks for putting us up a little faster

I was originally originally for Rex from across the Stark advisors uh Brian LLC here to present about historic tax credit did you get our request for letters first so I could get Emily on the phone would that work for you guys too that'd be okay I just don't want her to hang on item number four more items original item for a slow down to item number I'll make that both

parts so item number four a if you have um

Rick made a motion a second I appreciate that I just don't want her okay yeah um all right so I have uh may I get a real follow-up please Connie sold yes yes

the easiest way to do this

majority organization and then yeah so I'm Albert Rex with Ryan uh for Tax Credit Consultants requests for for the Massachusetts Department Emily series here attending qualify yes

yes so round um probably the list already um

at himself what is the are they doing

them whether or not

I feel like

the next one I'll look up is 38 48 Third Street

what does that mean IO GW

there and it's

most practical about the building expansion sorry

you say you expect places to service

second or third round

has three and then it's received in three round Emily is that correct so it's received so if you see the receipt of two to three prior rounds let's start receiving around probably six rounds in seventh round or will be coming into five up

save three right Emily three remember what size and down

in the project um I'll talk about that I don't really depends from Project to project the the difficult component of the seats for Tech program S 55 million dollars average number of applications

so if you do the math with that players wanted something you got 400 000 and some people get paid I'll describe why is why

so Emily did you find that number on um you want to go on to um

it has been sold here it's been acquired by a new developer and the developers comfortable with account agencies receive D it doesn't mean he will be going forward but right now he's

dig some and we're

Notre Dame Emily

started Construction

foreign

so what they do is they go um result of that bang those dollars would say

and plus anything

Federal coaches have

just helped Stanford spinning

fell

sorry are they applying that right now yes we agree applying that's right

Emily this is this has had a couple of meetings and I questioned whether

the way that this is followed I'm very I a couple of things one we're dealing with taxpayers pay a day Federal

just have a little I like to look at it hey Emily let's talk about

so all right so we can um we'll I'm talking to discuss this how many miles on Third Street is there anything yeah you can look um so I'll work with them sure because that's it Emily thank you very much

I think one um if you want to table that to I can go through my presentation like process if you go through to get here and power our clients and people asking these credits when they happen they might answer a lot more money I'll make that motion

all right um sorry should I go before everything

yes we're voting on table yeah all of them at the same time

sex with these all right okay so by now you know I'm Albert Rex I'm principal of historic attack Curtis Ryan um we used to be across the historic advisors mha we I was one of the three Partners bill mccrosty was our founding partner who's based in DC I had a partner Alan Johnson in Chicago we decided to sell ourselves after Bill and Allen retirement as a group we've been around 20 plus years we've done thousands of

these projects now to help with close to two billion dollars of equity um as of the time we joined Ryan last year we had about 460 active projects across the US and so we work in 45 States we've worked in Hawaii Alaska and we are currently also working in Puerto Rico because it's a territory they can get for credit so that's kind of who we are we have 40 employees around all those offices and

our Boston slash Providence office has the most we now is I think locations I thought I'd go through the federal historic credit very quickly to give you an overview because that plays in with the State Credit just to get a sense of the the federal historic credits really grew out of what's known as the axis 66 this is when the National Historic preservation Act was created it was in

anticipation of the 200 to Bicentennial so 10 years behind before the bicentennial and said hey we have this historic stuff maybe we should do something about it they create all these preservation laws and regulations including the National Registry of historic places which is the list of historic buildings within the U.S we'll talk about the national register a little bit more the federal historic tax

credit actually started as a form of accelerated appreciation in 1976 came a tax credit in 1979 for buildings that were 20 years old the 10 tax credit in 1981 it got into this whole three-tiered system thing and then finally in 1986 when Ronald Reagan the last president that really touched the tax code created the historic creditors and you know it he created two credits wanted 20 credit for buildings

listed on the national register and one at 10 credit for buildings built before 1936 and not listening 10 credit got way down during some level of tax return and it was only we didn't get involved in 10 credits they were just really so we're really talking about this 20 historic building credit um the program at the federal level provides a dollar for dollar credit on federal income tax

change in 2017 that gets claimed in equal portions over five the federal level gets equal courses over 5 again it's a dollar for dollar reduction instead so there's a form you could fill out if you have ten dollars of pay store credits you can lower your income tax this is 20 of all hard and soft costs directly attributed to the rehab so this is important to realize because the state credit's slightly different

the calculation of Pardon salt costs which are also known as eligible costs or qres qualified Rehabilitation expenditures are the same at the state level in the federal level um and basically if you think about this everybody thinks oh it's a historic credit so it only applies to things that you do you do historic in the building you take the building you turn it upside down you shake it if it doesn't fall out

it counts and then all soft costs directly attributed to detail so you don't count acquisition but you count things like like all your architectural account interest or in construction so when they pay their tax bill they can count that you can count um utility carry there's all sorts of different soft cards so if you had a landlocked building right here in downtown Fall River with no sight around it

and you're rehabbing it I would guess that you know less acquisition probably 95 of the cost in that building could count so basically you just take whatever that cost is 10 million dollars five by 20 credit the federal program there's two tests that you have to pass one you have to exceed your basis and ability so that means if you buy a building in land and building value is one million

dollars you have to spend more than one so the idea is that this is a pretty high barred reach and that you're really spending real dollars to rehab these buildings um and the second test is the building must be a certified historic structure these are individually listed on master register or contributing to good um and you guys actually have a lot of services um so there's three parts just like the

State Credit evaluation significance is the building historic description of Rehabilitation request for certification of completed work program goes to state store preservation office historic Commission for review and comment but the final decision makers are at the National Park Service in a group called TPS technical preservation services and basically the TPS people and the shippo people are just like me

and all of our staff they all have a background in historic preservation I have a master's degree most of my staff had master's degrees in my undergraduate degrees we all work and start preservation the typical for federal application fees it's lower for projects that are under three million dollars but there's not a lot of projects that we work on particularly they're under that so

basically you're spending 6 500 bucks um so buildings individually listed on the national register already are known as certified historic structures they don't need a part one still need a part one at the state level you still need to fill out the forms just because that's the way the state Works um you can also submit a part one that assures that the building continues to contribute to a historic district so

imagine a historic district was done in the 90s building was contributing yes this is a historic building but then somebody really changed the facade or messes with them then it might not be contributed so we actually have to file a document that says this building is still we can also submit at the time of this part one to say this bill of building is eligible for listing on the national

right so even no registered listing you can do this um submit this part one and say you know because this building's 50 years old and one of these criteria association with a famous person in history Association of broad pattern history or it's um architecturally significant um so Associates famous person Malcolm X's sister's house is listed in Boston because Malcolm X spent time there

um so it was listed because he was associated with him um you know down here garment workers Mill buildings all because there's some time in history schools are usually associated with the fact that they need to be cool because something was happening in town at that point to go to school and then architecture is pretty clear um you know there's a lot of beautiful buildings Fall River that could be

listed for architecture I think the Durfee project that we worked on for architecture and it can be listed under multi-criteria so it can be listed under a b and c all at once or a and b or a and C so that's the national register process that we go through the part two is this document um I could have brought one to show you but you can imagine it's basically anywhere from like 15 to 40 pages

and it basically is divided each page is divided into two sections one is the existing condition and the second section is the proposed work for that condition so it could be stairwells you know there are three stairwells in the building how historic are they they can change whatever you describe to stairwell in the second section we have to describe what's our client doing to that stairwell to

a store or our clients removing that stairwell to secondary scale well does not so we have to go through and describe in detail um what this is that document gets submitted along with um drawings so it's got existing condition drawings demo drawings and proposed drawings and typically at minimum 150 photographs receive the floor plans so the reviewers lay it out in the desk they read the narrative they look at the

pictures and they look at the drawings and they make a decision when they when the military interior state there are 10 standards they're very broad if you're a patient or they like the Constitution if you're political either way you can look at them in different ways right and kind of say well so part of our job obviously and on behalf of our clients is to try to Arguments for all these possible for our

clients and build their project they want to build um that whole document gets sent when it's approved at the federal level that is you conditional conditions could be anything from show us a masonry sample during construction supply us with window shop drawings supplies with more information about this or you can't use this you have to retain that so it can be a bunch of different qualifiers to say as long

as you do X Y and Z when you come for final approval you'll be fine so that's the part two document um I don't have a lot in here on on the financial part of it but I will tell you that at the federal level the part 2 document is the key Finance Finance most of our clients most real estate developers don't pay a lot of time set their taxes and they're really interested in

it so they are taking this part too and they're going out and finding somebody that does have tax liability Bank of America or U.S bank or some large Insurance Company and they're bringing them into their partnership and they're creating a way that they're making investment into this project so they're doing tax management at a very sophisticated level in the federal level our client that cash comes

in typically 20 percent of it time you're closing your construction loan and the rest of it comes in complete complete a project if our clients use it so the Federal Credit um gives you a little cash up front and most of it on the back end and there's a whole industry of accountants and how does this all and there's a there's a document that was generated by the IRS out of a court

case about eight years ago called rev proc 2014-12 that describes exactly how this transaction as long as you meet the transaction that way you can you can convert these Federal dollar credits into Dollars too um and then the final part three is request for certification of a completed work so one the part two between the part two and part three if let's say that something happens and it turns out that

you had something improved in the part two but you can't do it you can't save something or you need to make a floor plan we're allowed to submit amendments during the course when all the amendments are done and when you're getting your certificate of occupancy bless you at the end of the project um the part three is the final documentation which is just a one-page cover form and

showing that we did exactly what we said and that is the federal tax credit process um you know there's a lot of back and forth to it um the other thing to know is that under the federal process I'll talk about Massachusetts a second you're allowed to apply for historic tax credit for the album the whole idea is that a lot of our clients will you know negotiate a purchase and sale agreement get into a

purchase of sale and then they'll start trying to get and started tax credits so that they know they can pay for the project and then they'll buy the building someone will go forward and they won't buy the building and that part two is somebody where to step in the shoes and do the exact same thing we had approved they can do it at the state level there's a way to transfer the state tax credits then

so we have we have projects we have a project that we can we're working on they started applying for Massachusetts to start cash credits in 2008.

and this is the second owner and they've applied to do the math 14 years ago times three that's four they've applied a 42 HTC I think they can stop for a little while but never expire and there's never been any on the federal side it used to be as long as you had approved part two and you bought the project you could step into the shooting because it's not really a reservation of credits the federal side

um the other thing about the Federal Credit is that it's a guaranteed 20 of whatever you spend so if you're cost about 20 during construction you get 20 percent more in your tax es so it's a real you know so it's a guaranteed number um and this was Federal credits for really I showed you in the original slide that came out in 86 by 1990 they had this whole structure in

place where you could figure out how to transfer these credits to larger corporations because what happened in 86 was that a lot of doctors and lawyers used to invest in these projects but tax well well she weren't allowed to use their credit against pay so that's why the corporate this whole corporate thing started so it's a you know there's a whole big history here that's very interesting to me anyway

um from both from a tax perspective and a historic perspective so 99 rolls around and states started introducing state tax credit approach as they saw how successful the federal program was and they wouldn't have motivated people to um credit and basically what happened is that as state started doing the state next door started doing it because they were competing for whoever had the better state tax credit

program would typically get more developers there Rhode Island had an excellent program 30 percent but um state that doesn't have a lot of income so at some point they started realizing we're going to start running out of money here like we need to Tamp this down they put a hold on the program and they have to refile it every year um so anyway here it is 37 States they all come in different flavors someone

will piggyback so New York State and Maine you just applied for the Federal Credit as long as you get an approval you get um both New York State and Maine have per project attacks so you get up to five million dollars in those States New York's is based on census tract so it's not being used in Manhattan Maine is not based in census tract but there's a couple different tax tests you

have to pass but in both those States they don't review them locally they're a guaranteed five million dollars or up to 20 so if you have a 10 million dollar project you're guarantee um Connecticut programs captain 4.5 million dollars now but they also have an overall program cap of 31 million Rhode Island's programs all messed up at the moment but used to be really good Texas has the best program in the country

85 credit totally on cap told you earlier about that that number of dollars Texas has no basis test so you can go down in Texas and you can we have a project where we have a hotel project where our client has used it on six different projects they did a project on a floor got a Texas credit turned around the next year did another project on a different floor got a different Texas credit no they didn't

use any of the Federal Credit so anyway you have all these credits all over the country Massachusetts credit came out in 2004 I think that's the next slide so program history it was led by preservation Massachusetts with the Statewide advocacy group in conjunction with the National Trust the Boston preservation Alliance the state historic preservation office it was Jim iGo was at the preservation of Massachusetts

National Trust was Maryland fennelosa an attorney that helped us on the stage through a preservation officer was care Metz and I was the executive director of the Boston population so I was in the non-profit level and we decided in 2002 that we really needed a state tax credit with other states it was passed in 2003 the thing that was difficult was that we were presenting an uncapped program and

looking at a per project cap but when it went into the legislature they created a cap program so in 2004 there was only 10 million dollars of credit available that as you'll see in the next slide kept going up so in 2005 they made it into 15 million dollars and then in 2006 they made it into 50 million and they actually had this look back provision so in 2006 the MHC had 100 million dollars

worth of construction um and then filing in 2018 they increased it up to 55 million so you can see there hasn't been much of an increase credit available over the over them what you'll see is under allocation history the next paragraph down there were 15 applications in 2004 five recipients getting 8.1 million dollars in credit um so they basically the secretary gave out because it all goes through

secretary galvin's office he's historic commission is under the secretary um he basically distributed all in one round um to give you a sense of scale here we are 56 rounds later so in the last round there was 17 million four hundred and ten thousand dollars to allocated which is about average if you multiply that by three that's about 50 the average is about 17 million dollars around where MHC average is about that

there were 81 181 projects allocated to so if you do the math that's 96 180 personal project this is the reason we're back in front of you all the time and because we'll talk about it actually in the next slide that round you know this is round 56 there are actually 206 total applications so they're 19 plus 6 25 yeah 30 excuse me 25 projects did not receive an allocation

and in total they were looking for 304 million dollars and we and this is only the first round of the year we only have you know 55 million to allocated hence that again the reason that the average allocation is like 96 a thousand that allocation can spread the smallest allocation I've ever seen for one of our clients this thing is fifty thousand dollars the largest allocation was in 2004 one of our clients

there's not much in between there are a couple big projects and Fenway Park got a lot of money back then Liberty Hotel projects control but there are a lot less projects applying for it so there was more money available especially in 2006 when they had this change from 15 million to 50 million so again this is one of the reasons you get so many applications is because it comes out and drives and drabs so if you

think of an average size project in um in our industry an average size project s they're going to get 3 if they're only getting two hundred thousand dollars around they're getting 600 000 a year there's a long way for them to go and get up to 3 million we tell our clients that on average and I haven't done the math in a long time I used to keep all these statistics um

that if you're looking for more than two and a half or three million dollars in tax credits you shouldn't pencil in 20 you should pencil in 10 because that's probably what you're doing you're really given all the competition that's out that's out and get these things um so program description rules um it's been you know again it's a competitive program is one of the problems um has the same qualified historic

structure piece except that you'll notice a couple things in the in the actual regs it says not to exceed 20 percent so when it says not to exceed that leaves it open that it doesn't have to be 20. where the Federal Credit is a guaranteed 20 the state credit is anything below so it could be 10 it could be five percent could be could be all over the mass smaller the project the larger years typically

get um if the mass credit if you're not using the federal credit with it you just have to be eligible for listing on the national if you're just doing a NASA um and I can give you this PowerPoint afterwards um I I mentioned that there's a hundred percent basis test with the Federal Credit that you have to spend 100 the basis test is basically your value in the building Mass test is only 25

percent so it doesn't have to be a super substantial rehab um there is a private letter rolling so private lighter rulings are um things attorneys can file for their clients either the federal level or at the state level in this case it was sent to the Department of Revenue to clarify some things and in that letter ruling it one of the things that came out of it was basically stated that for the

purposes of the state tax credit non-profits could be seen so non-profits aren't allowed to use the Federal Credit they have to form a for-profit subsidiary like they have to put it into a taxable but the State Credit idea was we can let non-profits use it so like uh certain museums or buildings that don't want to put their building in for-profit subsidiaries it used to be a higher percentage that

do it I'm not sure as many do it anymore the credit is fully transferable so any of us here could buy a credit use it but it doesn't really happen that way that's more of an industry it's a very efficient credit meaning that typically people are paying 91 cents on the for a dollar credit so they're typically saving the middleman gets a little bit of that and the pain so it's a cent per dollar on

uh but there's enough state taxes that people will buy at that level and so the most effective programs in the country are transferring these credits at that rate around 90 whole active Market there's a whole bunch of other things I can tell you about that but you don't have to go in there and then obviously you guys know that there are three problems three rounds per year per year um and so that

you know puts you in a situation um where those three rounds were required to handle um because there are multiple rounds there are certain things we have to file every single time and this is within the regs within 830 Sim r63.38r-1.1 and this is what we typically have to put in the original application as well as in most so um there are there's chosen project criteria so we have to produce a document that

shows a description of financial hardship so why do you need the money a description of its importance of State assistance so again kind of why do you need the money from state level list the funding sources we have to put together we have to provide them with the per capita income of the city where we have to provide them with the number of low-income residential units that are being produced 25 percent of the State

Credit is set aside for low-income projects for low income housing projects I would guess that 80 of the State Credit goes to low-income housing projects to be honest it's a large percentage of it we have to supply with a list of executive orders or planning initiatives if you've ever never read the list executive orders they're kind of interesting sometimes to read but we have to call out what executive order

that our building relates to there's an executive order on affordable housing so that's typically one that we refer to a lot there's an executive order of planning it requires that we get a letter of support from local and state preservation organizations and governments so that's why we're in front of you all the time single round letter from you're in a certified local government

all river is that has an active historic Commission we have to provide a letter in our application so that's why we are always here because every time we file we have to provide them with that letter and we have to provide them with a letter from preservation don't have to provide a letter from local historical Societies or preservation groups but if typical preservation Worcester is a very

energetic group we get letters from them letters to the base Alliance some of the larger cities we do get those letters letters we are required to provide a letter from preservation Massachusetts a letter from any historic Commission and that is probably 90 sometimes the planning department we then have to provide an evaluation of overall condition of the property a description of the extent the project

will transform the site that currently lacks beneficial or practical use and a description of the economic impact the project will have with surrounding community all these criteria are basically set up the scoring system but we're not exactly sure how um like low-income housing tax credits there's a very active supporting system but we don't get a lot of feedback on the scoring systems we get mostly feedback on

the work that we'll be doing to date then a couple of additional things every time we file every round we have to have new wet sign cover forms so they have to be new cover forms every round we needed updated sources and uses budget with these qualified vehicle page expenditures I noticed broken out again we need a letter from the Department of Unemployment a certificate excuse me

Department of Unemployment assistance this was instituted 22 for all all tax credits so there's Brownfield tax credits to support the housing tax credits at the state level I think this was a way to make sure that people were actually paying into their I don't know what was happening in Massachusetts 2015.

support letters as we just discussed and finally there's a lobbyist question there where our clients have to tell if they're using a loan we don't we're not considered lobbyists are bringing professional obvious because the Secretary of State's office they reviewed where the mass historic commission sits also reviews all lobbying licenses so they need um credit allocations never expires we

talked about before there's been a lot of discussion of callback we've probably I don't know 100 million dollars in tax credits as an allocated projects that started and haven't finished or started and got sold or started just these credits I haven't tracked those in a while preservation Mass was tracking for a little bit buildings may be sold prior to construction and credits assigned to a

new owner so like with the Lincoln School it has now been sold the previous owner to a new process with with applying them with

Anthony forward the average length of a project from the time we started to the time it gets Parts three approval is about 30 months so most of our work and all these requests typically the largest number of requests are going to come in prior to construction never started and with the state program it typically takes at least 3 clients typically typically applies throughout the entire

construction process which could start later than a year and they apply typically up to the very end so we could you know if you look at 30 months that's almost it's a minimum nine rounds that we're probably some little bit longer therapy technical started and stop and sat bacon for a little while and it was sold to Alan Macomber and he had finished the project now that project I did my first sight visit there

in 2012 just it's just literally wrapping up now 2022.

um so and as I said here many projects will apply to four to five rounds prior to the startup Construction so when um when Emily comes before you folks Emily domiani and discusses these things it's difficult for her because she doesn't always have updates you know they might just be sitting there waiting for more dollars because the hardest thing is finding dollars to finance and the pandemic certainly had

an impact it drove cost construction costs up 10 to 15 percent at least drove Supply costs up 10 to 15 and really slowed things down and then you know things like just even getting Architects Construction Company definitely so there's been a lot of delays and we're still feeling that in our industry we're solid here outside of covet now we're still feeling some of the delays so for instance with the Adams House

because of cost overruns they have placed most of the building in service but because they haven't placed the whole thing in service they're still eligible and that's why they're doing it I think they have one very small portion of their build their building so that's I think that's it in a nutshell it's a lot of information but it's an incredibly I mean it's a rewarding thing to do we

love our projects but it gets very complicated and a lot of it is because of the program having an overall tap so competitive and we our clients are starting to get letters now in the last two years we've gotten letters that say thank you very much for your application we received 204 applications this round for 340 million dollars and we're not giving you and that's a hard letter for our

clients to get because they're expecting that money to finish the project um so it's a little bit of a sliding scale so if you can imagine you know you go to the bank let's say to buy a house and all of a sudden a house costs 20 percent more right in the middle of buying it or let's say you're constructing your own house and it costs 20 more where are you going to get those dollars

so that's why this money is so important to our clients because it really backfills and in some places um with but for the credits these projects wouldn't happen a lot of times they're twinned with affordable housing credits because for instance I know for a fact in Worcester the market rights affordable rents are identical but on the affordable side you can get a ton of different credits they can

all stay your own money because you can't get the only thing you get on the market rate so most people will just do affordable housing because it makes so and the MHC and The NPS obviously their big focus is are we we spend a lot of time with these window drawings talking about plaster work talking about storefronts a lot of that but there's a whole other aspect of this program about the financial side

that's that's a big overview a lot of stuff there but thank you hopefully it's informative to some degree a couple of questions sure absolutely one is yep sure

it's doing that and we're not everybody I'm trying to give you an overview of yeah of how this process works

and wrong sure thank you correctly yeah they might not get an application correct there are there are times when they don't get allocations like they get that matters they started on that month

so we do have clients that will not get money around if we have it so if our clients

client requested to the student Park Service that Amendment under so it's very so we did have our clients be getting allocations all along and all of a sudden we kind of amend it into something that went wrong that gets held up even though we put an application in the state they might not so they're tending you know so there can be multiple reasons why

the law somewhere along the line foreign

so the Federal Credit taxpayer because they can't just started so most of our clients bring in a third party

a really complicated structure

they have it here

so they have to do it through a really complicated structure that looks like this where this is this is the wrong one they could go to this one so basically the owner of the building here you can only allocate this to a partner you can't sell it so the owner of the building forms this new thing called a master cutting they basically bring in the a big bang or something tax credits flow

so if you own 50 of an LLC you get 50 these tax credit investors want 100. so they owe 99 of this LLC and then one percent something about you the owner of the building and you're known as the management and basically when the landlord finishes the project we get a part three pass through the credit to this investor and 99 and they're your partner for five years and in exchange for that they'll give

you 20 percent of that five million dollars to get ready to check for a million dollars they will then give you um another four and a half million replacement building and service and we'll hold back a little bit so that part three document there then your partners for five years two to three percent risk than that money the end of five years you're giving them five percent of whatever they put into the collapses

so it becomes a really complicated structure and that's the way it works and that's how you bring Federal Credit S I think every every project we've been doing with you has some level of Federal Credit Union so they're going through something like this or they're using the credit themselves and if they're doing that they're not getting any cash on Friday the Federal Credit what you receive it

as I said it's in five year trophies now so you get year or five years to carry forward for another 50. so you can use that Federal credit for 20 years ago actually I guess with the real change in the period in 20 years so some of our clients they okay so that's where that twenty percent yeah well they've already they've probably they they own the credit they probably sold the building and every

five years we have clients that typically yeah they get rid of it so but they still have the tax credit to use so yeah so this is why and it's a it's a fairly complicated Financial process in these credits so that's why every dollar so I haven't spent um

do you think I know where you're going to Center City I guess yeah so the reason so when they created the credit program they didn't want to make it like so um some of our clients some states and real estate tax payment programs where you can get more real estate tax attorneys that almost all those projects the when they create a federal tax credit program even when they see kind of thing

perpetuity because they're worried real estate development so after five years and at the end it was known as a recapture period you can do anything you want to build and sell it do anything because you sell the building for the next five years the partnership program 100

. there's a lot of ways to lose because tax credit Massachusetts has a similar recapture Texas I mentioned captioning one today after getting better Investments so anything you will have to apply

if if it had uh you know if you look at that it has a it's beautiful balustrated at the top so

are there any preservations

um I've never seen one more close something makes the invest ORS really quality what I do what we do see is that uh some of our real estate Developers will do Apartments and they'll put glowing kitchens in the end of five years they will go back because this has to become producing properties so they have to be rental apartments at the end of five years they'll go back with a really nice

kitchen to Consulting Congress so that's what we see we don't see a lot of people as I said you get restrictions when you get local tax payments typically in Most states and then if you have CPA yeah yeah CR they close with computers but there is no the Restriction here here it's turned out that as they said you know right I've never seen it later yeah Summer's a great degree I mean you

have to think of the historic the tax credits each year next year

or something that's their restrictions are

but they're on the exterior into your next material as well so they might have gotten uh so when used to get which this program is underfunded we just get back massive day and it's off today here we have East Captain East Hampton Town Hall

yeah right and it's typically but typically we have a few projects that actually are tax credit projects specifically

there this was the one-on-one

no I mean we you know we had we have communications with our clients I think right time is money so they would prefer to finish the flip side is they need money to finish them and there's almost especially as they said most just the numbers are really hard to work you know unless you're in a place that has just you know unlimited dollars below again for construction or lab space even though they're free

musician and appropriate board it is just difficult to make these projects today three dollars so there will be conversations around and it's the last round I will tell you for guaranteeing that if you're happy

but so they don't have to purposely draw them out he just gets strong now convenient real estate developer is not you know our clients are very honestly so um you know we don't we don't like to have the team comes back they would like more predictability I would personally I would love those programs dollars should be five months you know you're much better because what they can't take this to the bank

for instance if you're applying for low-income housing tax credits typically the state dhcd credits forth because they don't trust you actually get that so it's it's fairly unpredictable more just currently because

because look for them give us a little more into that oh we can I will uh if you guys go on a site visit I'll walk around with you I'll give you some more depth 5 billion okay now I'd be happy to control my mistake this is I like like I like all the projects curiosity of expand our national Orchestra districts we have plenty uh yet what what so say that because of the process we get

established or expanded what National Forest Service for those buildings they're all old people so they're helping over State credits as soon as you find your boa terminates availability yet they would be eligible for the State Credit as soon as they're listed on registered we're working on the building right now so we're working on a lot of we start working a lot of the 70 s it's very interesting like this yes um

we had to maintain the ceiling

that's unique some days somebody would do it and ask me any questions and then are there any additional questions okay

Academy here yeah except one didn't require

I'll make the motion

I have a motion to have a second hold up please please

Trevor yes great excellent thank you for your support appreciate it several properties I will work with Emily to get make that happen in the next couple weeks

it is spent in a good fashion to get a look at it and say yes it is yeah I understand that I appreciate that so we'll um we'll make sure we get some site visits scheduled with um the buildings that we discussed I'll be on at least one of them okay yes thank you so much and I'll send you um the presentation yes yes sure very much sure very informative thank you so much bye now

time is the original item

s to be back in order okay well I'll make emotions item five now six bring it back

I get a second motion by Connie and it's by Rick um

twice

okay um yes Joyce shark Rock yes all right so um item six original number five item six five fifty Seven Walnut Street also known as the other address is 244 Grove Street uh the Barnabas Blossom house I've received an inquiry restrictions to the property there are none um aside from the lower Highlands National registered District but the potential buyer was a consumed

um items seven 603 Rock Street passes for a letter indicating repair to the movement caused by storm damage this is in the Highlands 40c local historic district um and so they were merely just repairing work but because they need to get a permit for that that it will take hair we meant that the permanent plan so and that is

an excretency uh seven item eight 710 Walk Street they were requesting a letter indicating the non-compliance on the side entry porch

Side Porch was damaged in a car accident um contractor who's going to rebuild it but she's also trying to go finish up with the insurance company so she has the contractor lined up plans will that attack for us to have those plans for the entry inside entry group reviewed so she asked me with a letter indicating any timeline

though no it was just she was just looking for a timeline transpired with our board in the past item nine received a notification from the Massachusetts historical commission including inclusion for Spencer mccomer Farm Cemetery at 1046 Blossom Road it's got a sign for 804 and Massachusetts historical conditions inventory um item 10. 306 French Street also known as maplecroft they received a notification

that they are replacing a rear porch but it was a property itself is not in industry it is in the National Registry District environmental restrictions on item 11 is 10 263 Belmont Street the TR Vestal house they were also requiring about design restrictions they want to review expert that there are no they're the National Emergency items 12 1 West Street Border City Mills number one they're looking to repair or

possible restore the four holes on the structure they're in Fall Apart um requiring about design restrictions while there are none but I did indicate a guidelines very shortly late yeah

and item 13. I did send um there were three documents one of them was actually quite large uh so I did provide uh for five so this so this is regarding the downtown Fall River National register historic uh National Registry historic district expansion the area performance statement of significant committed to be the Massachusetts historical conditions so we will be meeting with that planner relatively shortly

once he receives comments from an agency

ask questions for the expansion but it's covering uh from Bedford Street South to uh down South Main Street to these properties along that stretch it's a fairly uh it's very significant so the presentations yes so he's not quite there yet part of the requirements he does need to meet with a property owner

owner um and then we'll update in the design guidelines Dominique will have she's deciding having the edits finalized by as my stats handled and finalized we look at that produced um distribute

to the home of that

yes yes and I would also like to make it just bring it up and make presentation with City Council and maybe you can end up with that we have any questions any

if you want to say that presentation which is very like to answer some questions so yep

scariest Texas part of movement

that's what happened yet um so our next meeting will be held on Tuesday May 16th motion to address 737

holiday s so the other thing too we have a governor extended hearings to move around

meeting going

on flexible um to make get a motion to adjourn the meeting at 7 37. I'll make a motion View and make it a vote please please yes yes and Jason sharper yes very much