Businesses along two busy District corridors currently torn up by construction might soon get more time to pay their property taxes.
Today the D.C. Council will consider emergency legislation, drafted by Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells, that orders the mayor to defer the first half of 2009 real estate tax bills for commercial businesses in the Seventh Street SE (Eastern Market) and H Street NE corridors. Business located along those two roadways would have until Sept. 15 to pay up what originally was due March 31.
“We’re at a time of reduced customer traffic, and at the same time we’re seeing increases in the value of the land,” Wells said Monday during a briefing on the legislative meeting. “It is causing some hardship for businesses along H Street and in Eastern Market.”
Both corridors are undergoing major overhauls as the Department of Transportation replaces pavement, sidewalks and lighting and adds other features, including a streetcar line on H Street. But active construction in both corridors is causing “severe disruption” to foot traffic, Wells wrote in a memo explaining why the legislation deserves the council’s emergency consideration.
“While the enhancements will ultimately provide greater supports to small businesses once complete, the disruption created during the construction phase of the projects and the associated noise, dust, dirt and lack of parking is sharply affecting sales and in same cases is placing severe pressures on affected businesses,” he wrote.
The bill will allow those businesses to “maintain access to as much working capital as possible.”
“Anything [Wells] or the city can do to help the retailers, the brick and mortar people in particular who are paying the taxes, would be immensely helpful,” said Ken Golding, president of the Market Row Merchants Association.
The association represents businesses along Seventh Street SE between North Carolina and Pennsylvania avenues. They are suffering the effects of a triple whammy, Golding said: the down economy, the streetscape construction and the continuing rebuilding of Eastern Market, which was ravaged by fire in April 2007.
“On the one hand it’s wonderful what the city is doing, that it’s improving the street and making it a fantastic street, but unfortunately there’s a downside,” Golding said.
