North Beach CRA's project list adds up to $409 million. Should it borrow to build?

The North Beach Community Redevelopment Agency ended its October open house with a direct question for residents: if its tax money brings in about $3.4 million a year and keeps growing, what should it pay for over the next five years, and should it borrow for big projects? This fourth explainer in the Red Sidewalks series lays out the choices.

The 2021 price list

The agency’s founding plan from 2021 estimated projects totaling $408,805,000, according to a table from that plan shown in the presentation. The biggest items:

• Normandy Isle resiliency (raised roads, stormwater, neighborhood work): $50 million
• 72nd Street community complex: $53.8 million listed under the city’s general obligation bond projects, plus a separate $10 million line
• Attainable housing program (buying, building and improving housing): $41.1 million
• West Lots parking garage (79th to 87th streets): $35 million
• Town Center resiliency (raised roads, stormwater pumps): $30 million
• Business attraction and investment programs: $25 million
• Historic preservation (facades, resilience, safety upgrades): $15 million
• Transit lanes on Collins Avenue, Indian Creek Drive and Harding Avenue: $13.2 million
• 71st Street landscaping, water towers and pump stations at 75th and Dickens, a resilient facade program, and an intermodal transit facility: $10 million each

Smaller lines include $8.6 million for traffic calming and protected bike lanes, $8 million for trees and lighting in North Shore, $7.8 million for smart streetlights, $6 million for public seawalls from 72nd to 77th streets, $4 million for the 71st Street bridge, $3 million for the Unidad senior center, $2 million for the Bandshell and $1.9 million for beachwalk security cameras. Canal dredging, private seawalls and the Byron Carlyle theater are listed with costs to be determined.

How much money is coming

The same 2021 plan projected the tax increment growing every year until the district ends in 2051. Its chart shows three scenarios, labeled 50%, 75% and 95%, with the yearly amount reaching about $10.7 million, $16.1 million or $20.3 million by 2050. The presentation puts this year’s budget at more than $6 million, counting money carried over.

The borrowing question

That’s why the presentation raises bonds. A CRA can borrow against its expected future tax increment to build big projects now and repay the debt over time, the presentation notes. It doesn’t propose a specific bond, a dollar amount or which projects one would pay for.

What’s new on the table

The 2026 presentation adds ideas of its own: housing at the Byron Carlyle, forgivable loans to fill vacant storefronts, help for owners repairing historic MiMo buildings, a temporary “model block” on Collins Avenue from 73rd to 75th streets, working with the state to make 71st Street more of a main street, a water taxi stop, a fund to buy strategic properties, underground stormwater storage, a living shoreline along the Parkview Island canal, and a flood risk study.

Residents can weigh in at the advisory committee’s meeting Tuesday, Nov. 10, 4:30 to 8:30 p.m., at Normandy Shores Golf Club, 2401 Biarritz Drive.

Going to the meeting? Here are 12 questions the agency’s own records raise, with links to each record, and a printable one-page version.

Next in this series: how the 2016 North Beach plan set all this in motion.