Silver pitches Kalahari to Spotsy EDA

Emily Battle has the scoop on what happened this afternoon at the Spotsylvania County Economic Development Authority, where it was expected to discuss floating bonds for a water park in the city. The city’s EDA up until today was not favoring Kalahari’s request to eat the fees they charge for issuing bonds.

Silver Director of Development Scott Little was pitching the idea to the Spotsy EDA without knowing that the city EDA had already approved waiving the fees. What did he say?

- Little said Kalahari would be willing to pay the same fee it had agreed to pay to Fredericksburg on the roughly $240 million taxable bond issue. That is $59,375 a year for 10 years. NOTE: This is nowhere near the $2 million Supervisor Hap Connors mentioned during last week’s meeting, but it’s money the county wasn’t going to have unless the EDA did this, which is all moot now.

- Little told the county EDA that Spotsylvania could have a “marketing presence” within the Kalahari resort if they issued the bonds, although he did not get into specifics about what that would entail. NOTE: Does Silver have control over who gets a marketing presence in Kalahari?

- Little also said that Silver would “be happy to pledge one of our projects in Spotsylvania County to Class A office space,” since he’d heard the county wants to attract more office tenants. He did not specify which project, and he noted that the pledge would be dependent on finding tenants for such a project. NOTE: Without specifics on what property he is talking about, this might have just been that sweet stuff that’s not really sugar.

- As an added sweetener, Little also said Silver would assist the county in trying to get another entrance to the Spotsylvania Towne Centre at Carl D. Silver Parkway and State Route 3. That is something mall developer Cafaro has wanted for a while. Cafaro has approached the city about condemning a piece of property that would be necessary to make this entrance happen, but several city officials have pointed out that there’s not much incentive for Fredericksburg to do that, since it would put a tax-paying city merchant out of business while making it easier for shoppers to take their tax dollars out of Fredericksburg. Little acknowledged that “We don’t have the say-so, we don’t own the land, but we’d be happy to help.” NOTE: Dear Silver, this connection has been promised for years and never has happened. The Mall has been open before you built Central Park. You also don’t own the land to make such a connection.How can Silver help?

The EDA didn’t really address any of these carrots that Little was dropping all over the meeting room floor.

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