The proposed revitalization of the Dixie Cup toward market-based apartments — one its developer says hinges on getting help with property taxes — also could provide help in addressing Northampton County’s affordable housing concerns.
Representatives with developer Skyline Investment Group appeared Thursday before a Northampton County Council committee to showcase the proposed $155-million reconstruction of the century-old factory, a landmark in the region that has been underused for decades and has turned into an eyesore.
The project calling for about 400 apartments with monthly rents starting at around $1,800 includes a tax-financing plan of nearly $29 million, along with setting aside about $1.1 million for affordable housing.
County Executive Lamont McClure told council Thursday evening he would not support the “Tax-Increment Financing” plan, or TIF, without the affordable-housing financial commitment.
“We need that money for our own affordable housing projects,” said McClure, citing a spring 2021 county assessment on the lack of housing for low- to moderate-income residents.
“And the thing, I think, that screams out for this $1.1 million,” McClure said, “is homelessness remains an issue, particularly among families with children.” He said during the 2019-20 school year, more than 600 students enrolled in county schools were considered living without housing.
Asked by Council member John P. Goffredo if the issue has lessened in the last three years, McClure said it has not.
“Clearly we have a housing crisis that is up and down the economic ladder,” he said, “We need housing for everybody.”
Affordable housing has been a crisis for several years. A study last year by Community Action Lehigh Valley said more than half of renters in the Lehigh Valley spend more than 30% of their income on rent, and nearly 700 people are homeless. The Morning Call explored the situation last year through its reported series “Room for More?”
While McClure did not detail how the money would be used, he has said the county needs funding toward a program it has embarked on building housing, such as a project proposed in Glendon.
The Dixie Cup TIF includes either the developer setting aside 10% of units constructed as affordable housing, or making an in-lieu payment of $27,000 per unit covering the 10% provision, or about 40 apartments. Skyline Founder Brian Bartee said Skyline is opting to pay nearly $1.1 million toward housing funds.
“It’s better to put the cash with the community and let them have the discretion in how to use the money,” Bartee, who was not at the meeting, said by telephone.
Earlier Thursday, during council’s Economic Development Committee meeting, Neil Griffin and Claudia Robinson, two representatives of New York-based Skyline, gave a presentation on plans for the 100-year old structure, which at one time produced paper cups that became popular and necessary around the time of the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century.
As they had when they presented plans before Wilson council and the Wilson Area School Board, they spoke of how the next generation of the old Dixie Cup factory will not only include about 400 apartments and a restoration of the giant cup, which will wind up on the ground instead of high above the building.
Plans also call for installing a similar-sized, plexiglass replica of the famous cup on its rooftop. It will also have rooftop solar panels that will offset some energy costs. As for amenities, apartment dwellers and residents will have access to a trail, a dog park and a place to enjoy light refreshments.
Council committee took no action Thursday but will have to vote specifically on whether to approve the “TIF,” a state program and financing mechanism that is used to pay for specific infrastructure improvements needed to support a development project, particularly blighted sites.
Skyline says taxes paid over the next 20 years of the TIF will be used to support a bond issue toward payment of nearly $29 million. Property taxes during the TIF are used to pay back loans taken to fund some improvements.
The TIF is essential, Robinson said after the meeting, in part because it gives lenders a “great deal of comfort to see that public support for a building … ”
Skyline plans would have the 400 one- and two-bedroom apartments at “market-rate” rents that the owner hopes will attract young professionals and retirees. Some 75% will be one-bedroom units, priced about $1,800 a month, while less than one-fourth of the apartments will be two-bedroom, running around $2,800 monthly.
Construction could start in August, Robinson said, with the first apartments ready as early as January.
Bartee said he hopes to complete property acquisition later this month from the current ownership group, Wilsonpark Ltd., led by Salisbury Township attorney Joseph Reibman.
Since Wilsonpark took over the 12.5-acre plant and related property around 1983, Reibman operated the Dixie Cup plant as a warehouse and distribution center. An agreement of sale around 2008 for a developer to turn the building into housing fell through when the recession hurt residential development, he said.
In 2022, a New Jersey developer pulled out of Dixie when his vision of putting in a “last-mile logistics” facility did not receive support from the county and some in the community.
Reaction positive
Wilson officials expressed hope the Skyline project will move forward. Other plant closings over the last decade and a shift in status of the former Easton Hospital in 2020 to nonprofit owner St. Luke’s University Health Network created a dent in its property tax revenue.
Wilson Mayor Donald R. Barrett Jr., who would like to see some of the affordable housing money doled out to the borough and school district, nevertheless is hoping the TIF and project will go through to pump more tax revenue into the borough’s budget.
“There’s a lot of infrastructure needs in the borough that need to be addressed,” Barrett said, citing funding for a new police station as one example.
For some, the vote and start to rebuild the interior or the old plant can’t come soon enough, with a few people reminiscing during the committee meeting about family members who worked at the plant.
Council member Jeff Warren, who sponsored the ordinance along with Goffredo, said his grandfather worked for decades loading and unloading trucks at the plant, noting what the former factory meant to his family and many in the community.
“I’m very excited about the prospects of what this can mean and just a reuse of a structure such as this,” Warren said. “It’s going to be very proactive for the community. It’s exciting for me, given my family’s history.”
“I’ve been through four or five developers,” said borough Solicitor Stanley J. Margle, whose mother was employed at Dixie. “They spend a lot of money, look at the project and decide they can’t do it. These folks decided they can do it. I really believe it is happening this time.”
Resident Armando Moritz-Chapelliquen, who created a community survey for residents on how best to repurpose the Dixie building to benefit the community, said he was overall optimistic about the project after listening to the presentation.
“The fact that there is so much both in the proposal and the way the development team presented the proposal echoed a lot of points that were made in the survey,” he said. “It speaks to a more collaborative approach in terms of how we are looking for this site to be.”
The full council will learn more about the TIF proposal, including at a public hearing scheduled June 6, with a vote expected July 3, according to its clerk, Linda Zembo.
The county’s General Purpose Authority would be charged with overseeing the tax-increment financing.
