What you must understand
- Bellevue s long-discussed $115 million riverfront redevelopment with Neyer Properties is delayed again due to rising interest rates and financing challenges.
- The city s planned $7.8 million parking garage ballooned to $13 million as rates jumped, forcing redesigns and scaled-down plans.
- Bellevue officials now expect construction to begin in about a year, with a smaller $10 million garage and fewer amenities.
Rising mortgage rates have forced the city and developer to start over, delaying Bellevue’s long-promised $115 million riverside renovation.
A development agreement and land disposal with Cincinnati-based Neyer Properties for a project expected to cost $11.5 million in private funding and $17.5 million in infrastructure upgrades were approved by the Bellevue City Council in August 2022.
Since then, though, nothing has been done with the site, and the city has given the developer several extensions, the most recent of which was approved during a council meeting on August 13.
The land is about seven acres and is bound by the Ohio River to the north and Fairfield Avenue to the south, with Lafayette Avenue to the east and Berry Avenue to the west. It has long been the target of redevelopment efforts that ultimately never materialized.
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The mixed-use complex will include 239 market-rate apartments, 10,000 square feet of commercial space, a hotel, and a public parking deck.
This design calls for extending Harbor Greene Drive and making improvements to Lafayette and Berry Avenues.
“The city agreed to do the public garage and the public right of ways, but the problem was that interest got so high,” Bellevue Mayor Charlie Cleves told LINK nky. Interest was just 1% when we originally started, and it was later postponed. The school wouldn’t approve it for approximately a year, so it was postponed. Interest then increased to 5.5%.
According to Cleves, the difference in interest rates over the course of 30 years caused a parking garage that was worth $7.8 million to suddenly increase to $13 million.
According to Cleves, the city has heard that interest rates will drop over the course of the upcoming year.
He claimed that because the IRBs were only going to raise $7.8 million, which was all we could generate at first, when interest was low, we were no longer able to fulfill the portion we had pledged to accomplish with them. Then, all of a sudden, interest exploded, and we were unable to think of our contribution.
The cost of redesigning the garage was approximately $10 million. According to Cleves, Neyer’s revised project start date is one year.
According to Cleves, there aren’t any renderings at the moment because everything is always changing.
We re trying to still do the same type of thing, Cleves said. It s going to get scaled down because we had to, to make it work, so we can build a smaller garage and get it to work with the money we were able to raise.
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