Developer Dwight Taylor said he foresees the potential demise of Anne Arundel’s commercial expansion if he and his fellow office building developers have to pay an extra $750,000 in fees.
“The fact is that we’re having to eat those costs — you can’t get the market to accept those costs,” said Taylor, president of Corporate Office Properties Trust’s development and construction division and a member of the county’s impact fee committee.
Much of the eight-month-long debate about impact fees — money developers pay to expand roads, schools and public safety near their projects — has centered around residential development, but office developers share the same worries as home builders.
Taylor, whose company operates several office buildings in the BWI corridor, said he can’t pass on the cost to businesses who can easily move to Howard or Baltimore City instead of Anne Arundel.
If the current proposal is approved this fall by the County Council, office developers will pay between $9,000 and $11,000 per 1,000 square feet, depending on the size of the building.
The current fee averages $1,500 per 1,000 square feet.
He also said developers pay for road expansions as required by adequate public facilities laws on top of impact fees.
“But APF is different from impact fees, and that distinction is the actual physical impact beyond the project, which will still bring traffic,” said Carole Sanner, assistant planning and zoning officer.
Protecting commercial development has been a sensitive issue on both sides of the impact fee debate.
Expansion at Fort Meade and military contractors such as Northrop Grumman have the county poised to see more than 20,000 new jobs in the next few years for the Base Realignment and Closure process.
But county officials have said impact fees are too low and do not accurately cover the cost of expanding roads, schools and public safety fleets.
“We’re trying to find a way to encourage development and expand the tax base, and balancing that against developers paying for their impact,” said Bob Burdon, an impact fee committee member and president of the Annapolis and Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce.
Taylor said his solution is to remove the property tax cap so the county could increase those taxes and not the impact fees.
But County Executive John R. Leopold has said he will not seek to remove the cap and has adamantly supported raising fees instead.
Several council members have also said impact fees will rise — but by how much remains to be determined.
“I don’t think anyone in this room wants to stop, halt, destroy the economic vitality in this county,” said Council Chairwoman Cathy Vitale, R-Severna Park, one of only three council members present at the work session Tuesday.
