Not enough from Niowave

At issue is whether the company should continue to receive over $650,000 in various tax breaks despite apparently not yet living up to its end of an agreement to complete improvements to a 14,000-square-foot pre-fabricated addition — a pole barn — adjacent to the company’s downtown headquarters in the old brick Walnut Street School.

The issue first inflamed the neighborhood in 2012, when the structure went up with no input from or warning to the community. The sprawling blue and white metal building shaded a nearby neighbor’s yard and looked out of place in this neighborhood of old brick homes.

Responding to complaints, the Lansing Economic Area Partnership — LEAP — which represents the city of Lansing, forged a deal in 2013 between the company and neighbors to improve the building’s exterior and help it blend into neighborhood. Under the agreement, Niowave would spend $120,500 while the city would pitch in $123,600 to fund the exterior improvements. The city’s portion would come from the Brownfield loan program.

In the original agreement, exterior improvements included adding a facade to the building that would mute the bright white and blue metal and tie it into the older, dark brick of the Walnut Street School. Fake windows would be added to give the facility a different feeling, and the roof would be painted. That work was supposed to be completed by Oct. 14, 2014.

A January 2015 report from LEAP said the company spent well over $400,000 addressing improvements to the facility, including adding a parking lot, as well as paying professional fees for architects and laborers to complete the tasks.

Despite the written agreement, Niowave has not completed much of the promised work in the year it was given. It did not respond to inquiries.

A January 2015 report from LEAP found that of the nine agreed-upon improvements, four were incomplete and five completed. Plans to paint two sides as well as the roof of the building to blend the facility into the neighborhood are among improvements still not made.

What might get the company’s attention is a resolution introduced by Lansing City Council President Tina Houghton that would require Niowave to complete the painting of walls and additions of the faux windows, but would remove the requirement the company paint the glaring white roof of the metal building. The paint job would need to be completed by a date not fully identified in the resolution as yet.

The measure, if passed by City Council, would allow Niowave to continue to receive up to $124,000 in Brownfield tax incentive dollars, but not require the company to complete all the originally agreed-upon improvements. It has already been reimbursed about $64,000 of the $124,000.

The agreement was also tied to a personal property tax deal with the city worth $549,434 over six years. It has already benefited by $91,572.33.

A special public hearing of the planning and development committee of Council to discuss the Houghton resolution is set for 7 p.m. April 22 at the Greater Lansing Housing Coalition Neighborhood Empowerment Center, 600 W. Maple St.

Homeowners living near the facility clearly are frustrated. “It looks like Niowave is not going to fix the facade,” said neighborhood activist Dale Schrader of the proposed resolution “That’s unacceptable to the neighborhood. It might even make it look worse.”

Schrader wants Council members to reject the Houghton resolution, and instead proceed with rescinding tax incentives for the company.

Jessica Yorko, the Fourth Ward Council representative, which includes the Walnut Neighborhood, said she is opposed to the Houghton resolution and that she would support rescinding the tax incentives. She does not believe the company has fulfilled their promised from the 2013 agreement, she said.

In an email to Schader, Councilwoman At Large Carol Wood said it is time to rescind the tax incentives given to the company.

“The neighborhood has compromised, and compromise and compromised,” Wood said in a phone interview. “They could have stuck to their demand that Niowave tear down the building, but they didn´t. They agreed to the facade improvements, and we can’t hold Niowave to that? Apparently not. I have absolutely no faith — none — that they will finish these projects.”