Lemay Museum Comes Back Before City Council

As you may recall, the Lemay Museum came before the Tacoma City Council late last year with demands a request to change their Option and Development Agreements with the City. Well, The Lemay’s David Madeira and board members came before today’s City Council Study Session to provide an update on the project and discuss a few more minor changes.

Madeira provided a background presentation on the project for the new Councilmembers. He listed off several big name sponsors and detailed the $35 million raised so far – and this doesn’t include the $17.5 million land donation from the City.

Their next step is to complete the financing package. Financing comes together with $20 million in private funds, plus the City land, a HUD Loan, and New Market Tax Credits. They are currently waiting on the Constructability Report to head to the New Market folks. If they can get the third amendment to their agreement with the City by next week, Lemay should know whether the financing package will be completed. Groundbreaking could occur this Spring with a grand opening in the Summer of 2011.

So, the last set of changes to the Lemay Option and Development Agreements were approved by the City Council on December 15, 2009. It adjusted the lot lines a bit, changed the requirements for the access road, gave the museum control over 124 parking stalls, and capped permit fees among other things. After the vote by Council, Lemay came back asking for some clarification in language and objections to two items:

1. Construction of the show field improvements must be completed within one year of receipt of Certificate of Occupancy for the Collector Car Center. If the show field is not completed, property reverts to City until Lemay is ready to proceed with construction.
2. Future encumbrances on the LeMay property are prohibited.

The proposed amendment to the agreement removes the first objectionable requirement by adding “more time.” The prohibition on mortgaging the property was modified to allow encumbrances exclusively for financing expansion or capital improvements for the Museum but not for commercial purposes, operating revenues or repairs and maintenance. This implies that the museum is successful and moving forward at the point an encumbrance becomes possible.

The reworded agreement will be back before the City Council next week. Then, we wait and see if the financing comes through.