CHICKASHA – A review committee will be empaneled to consider creation of a special taxing district that would encompass developer Chet Hitt’s 284 acres near the municipal airport where he envisions a manufacturing and industrial park.
The City Council approved a resolution Aug. 18 that declared the city’s intent to evaluate whether to create a tax increment finance district in and around the airport industrial park. The vote was 8-1; Councilman Charlie Burruss wanted to reject the resolution.
Hitt unveiled plans June 5 for a multibillion- dollar power generation project that would constitute the largest single private investment in Chickasha’s history. He envisions construction of a natural- gas fired electricity generating plant that would power a data center on the 280 acres he bought earlier this year in the Chickasha Airport Industrial Park.
Hitt also has scheduled an Oct. 3 trip to Southern California to recruit as many Golden State manufacturers to Oklahoma as possible. “His focus is aerospace jobs, in part because of Chickasha’s proximity to Tinker Air Force Base” in the Oklahoma City metro area, Jim Cowan, director of the Chickasha Economic Development Council, told Southwest Ledger.
Hitt’s goal is to attract companies willing to create up to 150 manufacturing jobs each in
Oklahoma. “He’s not going whale fishing,” Cowan said. “His intent is not to land manufacturers who would create 500 jobs, because they would demand massive incentives to locate here, and then run the risk of getting bought out by a bigger fish, or failing, or shifting the work somewhere else,” like Delta Faucet did in 2006 at a cost of 590 jobs.
State law provides for appointment of a review committee to submit recommendations concerning creation of a TIF, “and determine whether the proposed plan and project will have a financial impact on any taxing jurisdiction and business activities within the proposed district…” Accordingly, the committee will be chaired by Mayor Zach Grayson, and its members will include one representative each from the Chickasha Planning Commission, Grady County, the Grady County Health Department, Chickasha Public School District, Canadian Valley Career Technology District and the Grady County Emergency Management Service District.
It also will include three representatives of “the public at-large,” who will be chosen from a list of seven names submitted by Grayson and other members of the committee. One of the at-large members must be a representative of Chickasha’s business sector.
The City Council approved three measures June 2 that were intended to prepare Chickasha for major changes anticipated from the airport industrial park development.
• City Manager Jim Crosby was authorized to draft a consulting agreement with COalign Group founder Cathy O’Connor.
She will assist the city “in connection with incentives for economic development projects,” and will research the requirements for grant applications “to fund infrastructure improvements to support” anticipated development in the airport industrial park.
“We want to be in a position to strike when the iron is hot,” Grayson said.
• An agreement was signed with Halff Associates for professional engineering services. The company has offices in Oklahoma and five other states.
• The council also approved an agreement with The Public Finance Law Group (PFLG), based in Oklahoma City, which will assist city officials with creation of the city’s third tax increment finance district.
“We need to establish a TIF that would be beneficial to development in the area and would provide an avenue to repay the city for any improvements that may be needed in the area,” the council was advised.
For example, Hitt has asked the City of Chickasha to build a couple of roads in the industrial park, extend water and sewer lines and provide the requisite water meters. “The airport is city owned and water sales are their primary revenue producer,” he noted.
When the airport industrial park was established, a mile-long two-lane paved road with curb and gutter was built; a water line was installed in the easement of that road, along with two fire hydrants; and an abbreviated sewer line was constructed.
In a related matter, the City Council voted Aug. 18 to retain Halff and Associates to perform an updated boundary survey, infrastructure and utility engineering for the Airport Industrial Park. The Richardson, Texas, company will be paid $86,000 for its services.
Halff will conduct environmental engineering and subsurface utility engineering associated with water and sewer improvements to the industrial park project, and identify boundary discrepancies, records reflect. “The city is interested in due diligence to get the land ready for development,” Halff Senior Project Adviser Dennis Haar wrote.
City’s TIF history Chickasha’s first TIF was created in 2005 and ended in 2020. It extended “from Tractor Supply Co. on East Grand Avenue to the area across South Fourth Street behind the Jiffy Lube, where Chick-fil-A and Scooters on South Fifth Street are located today,” Community Development Director Rachel Bernish related.
“We have many businesses in place because of the TIF district,” she said. “Not every lot was sold or tenant space filled, but we have many flourishing, successful businesses for our community and citizens.”
The City Council approved the “Gateway to Chickasha” economic development plan on Sept. 3, 2024. That plan contemplated two TIF districts: the “Downtown Chickasha Project” and the “Highway 62 Corridor.”
The city’s second TIF – the Downtown Chickasha Project, also known as Tax Increment District A – was activated by the City Council last October, effective New Year’s Day 2025. It will terminate on June 30, 2050.
That TIF district encompasses much of downtown and includes approximately 300 properties,” said attorney Nathan Ellis of the Public Finance Law Group. According to the PFLG, that district includes 179,030 square feet of retail, restaurant and service industry space; 205,500 square feet of office space; and approximately 75 units of hotel space with average occupancy rates of $170 per night, with a 50% occupancy factor.
Although the council gave its preliminary blessing to the US-62 Corridor TIF, it has not been activated.
That proposed TIF district would focus on development of property east of downtown, along U.S. Highway 62 extending to the turnpike interchange. The district would encompass properties along the north and south sides of the highway, with the exception of the Grady County Fairgrounds and tribal property at the southeastern corner of the targeted area, Ellis said.
If it’s ever activated, the Highway 62 Corridor TIF would encompass approximately 200,000 square feet of retail and service industry space, and 41,500 square feet of office space.
What is a TIF?
A TIF is an economic development tool to “incentivize” capital investment in undeveloped or underdeveloped property to enhance the tax base and increase employment opportunities within the municipality, Ellis related. “A lot of the purpose of a TIF is to create a coordinated effort of development.”
In a TIF, a municipality designates a geographic area to be redeveloped. When the redevelopment occurs, property values go up and so do ad valorem tax receipts, sales taxes and hotel/motel taxes. When that happens, the tax receipts are split into two streams.
The first tax stream, tied to the original property value before redevelopment – the “baseline value” established by the county assessor – continues to go where it always went: schools, roads, parks, sanitation, fire and police departments, etc.
The additional ad valorem taxes tied to the increase in property values – the so-called “tax increment” – are used to fund eligible project costs. Those can include land acquisition, infrastructure, parking, financing and assistance in development finance.