Photo by Jon Anderson
The former Bed, Bath & Beyond store sits mostly dark in the Riverchase Crossings shopping center on Aug. 5, 2024. The store is expected to be divided into two retail stores.
The Hoover City Council on Monday night approved up to $1.7 million in sales tax rebates for the owner of the Riverchase Crossings shopping center in exchange for him bringing in new tenants to fill the vacant Bed, Bath & Beyond space in the center.
The owner of the center, Bill Livingston of Warner Robins, Georgia, plans to subdivide the 38,000-square-foot Bed, Bath & Beyond space into two separate retail stores, said Greg Knighton, the city’s economic development manager. A national specialty retailer is slated to fill 16,000 square feet of the space, and another retailer is slated to fill 22,000 square feet, Knighton said.
Additionally, Livingston plans to create a new outparcel in the parking lot of the shopping center. His total investment is expected to be in excess of $11 million, with hard costs of at least $7 million, Knighton said. The total project should create at least 100 direct jobs in the shopping center, Livingston said.
The national specialty retailer alone is expected to generate $900,000 in annual sales tax revenue for the city and, with an estimated 5% annual growth rate, should bring in $11.3 million to the city in sales tax revenues over 10 years, Knighton said.
Additionally, the project is expected to create an additional $44,000 a year in property tax revenues for the city, $35,000 of which will go to Hoover City Schools, Knighton said.
The City Council agreed to rebate 50% of new sales tax revenues generated from the national specialty retailer for 10 years, with a cap of $1.7 million.
Knighton said his team recommended the tax rebate because the project will help reinvigorate the Lorna Road and U.S. 31 corridors and fill a big-box retail space, which his hard to do in today’s market. Bed, Bath and Beyond closed its store in Hoover a little more than a year ago as part of a national closure of all physical store locations that came with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Buy Buy Baby, a subsidiary of Bed, Bath and Beyond, also closed all 122 of its stores, including the one in the Patton Creek shopping centerm, which also remains vacant.
Councilman Casey Middlebrooks commended Knighton and Livingston for helping redevelop an empty big-box space in the city.
Bluff Park resident Robin Schultz told the council he is in favor of tax abatements in general but noted that this seems to be more of a reward for redevelopment instead of an incentive to do it because it is his understanding a lease was signed about two months ago.
Councilman Derrick Murphy said this economic development deal has been in the works for many months and was not put together after a deal already had been signed.
Livingston said he’s not at a point yet where he can announce the name of the retailers planned to come, but he hopes to be able to announce that by December. He wants to make the shopping center something of which residents can be proud, he said.
See the video of the complete Aug. 5 Hoover City Council meeting on the The Hoover Channel YouTube page.
