The Ellensburg Downtown Association is asking the City of Ellensburg to adopt a new tax incentive to encourage more housing development in the downtown as part of their ongoing revitalization efforts. 

The proposed incentive is modeled after an similar ordinance that has been used successfully in other Washington communities including Tacoma ad Walla Walla.  The ordinance would allow property owners who develop a minimum of four new housing units in the downtown, to deduct the value of those housing units from their property taxes for up to 10 years. 

Executive Director for the Ellensburg Downtown Association, Timothy Bishop sees this as an important resource for the downtown’s revitalization efforts.  “This is a great tool to help reduce some of the risk for property owners looking to redevelop upper floors and generate a realistic economic return on the downtown buildings they own.  By adding more housing downtown we also improve the economic benefit to the existing businesses as well by providing more customers in the downtown during all hours of the day 7 days a week”  Bishop added that “If we want to retain downtown businesses like the dry cleaners, florist, and local pharmacy, these businesses depend on neighborhood residents as there main customer base.  By adding more neighborhood to downtown we can help make downtown a stronger business district for those businesses that we want to keep downtown.”

The City of Ellensburg already has a similar tax incentive for property owners of historic buildings.  “This ordinance is very similar to the current special valuation except that the incentive is tied to the end use of the building instead of its designation as a historic structure, which means that this tax incentive could be used to redevelop non historic buildings and even new construction in the Downtown.” 

The Ellensburg Downtown Association is scheduled to present the proposed ordinance to the Ellensburg Planning Commission this Thursday February 8^th.

For more information contact the Ellensburg Downtown Association at 509-962-6246 or by email at info@ellensburgdowntown.org