ST. LOUIS • Tom Niemeier is the founder of Space LLC, an architecture firm that gets about 30 percent of its business designing rehabs that are funded with Missouri’s historic preservation tax credits.
Three years ago, Space used the credits as crucial funding for its own rehab, turning an abandoned old tape factory into a light, airy, energy-efficient studio and workshop for its 18 employees.
The studio is located on a strip of Manchester Avenue known as the Grove, full of once-empty buildings that have been revived as homes, restaurants and businesses, many with the help of historic tax credits.
So when Niemeier heard the state Senate voted to cut funding for Missouri’s historic tax credit program by two-thirds, he knew what he had to do: Get on the phone to Jefferson City and tell lawmakers what he thought of the idea.
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“I think it’s really bad,” Niemeier said. “Really, really bad.”
And, since one phone call from one architect probably wasn’t going to be enough, Niemeier has opened the doors of Space’s studio each of the last two Wednesday afternoons to host “call parties,” inviting other historic tax credit supporters to join him making calls of their own. A downtown office building has been hosting parties, too, along with a few other St. Louis businesses. All told, they’ve dialed the 573 area code hundreds of times already.
“We’ve been trying to light some fires under people,” said Andrew Weil, executive director of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis.
This level of grass-roots support reflects a renewed urgency among supporters of the historic tax credit, which reimburses one-fourth the cost of rehabbing old buildings. The program is hugely popular in St. Louis, where it has helped fund hundreds of rehabs over the last decade, everything from downtown hotels to South City row houses. But it has also cost the state Treasury dearly — $600 million in credits have been redeemed since 2009 — and that has made the historic tax credit a fat target for budget hawks and those who say Missouri needs more money for other things.
Four years ago, for the first time, lawmakers placed a cap on the program, at $140 million. Since then, a state tax credit panel has twice recommended paring it further — to $75 million in 2010 and $90 million last fall. But the cuts never happened due to the Jefferson City logjam around economic development bills.
This spring, Gov. Jay Nixon and leaders in both the House and Senate have said they hope to break that logjam, to cut some programs in order to pay for new ones, like tax credits for data centers and air cargo. And when the Senate passed its version of a bill in late February, it cut the historic credits far deeper than anyone before had even suggested: to $45 million.
“That would essentially destroy the historic tax credit,” said Jerry Schlichter, a St. Louis attorney who helped create the program in 1997 and has long been one of its leading advocates. “That’s clear.”
It’s less clear whether the $45 million is a number the Senate will stick to, or just a starting point for negotiations with the House, where support for the historic tax credit has typically been stronger. That will likely get hashed out over the next few weeks as lawmakers from both sides of the Legislature craft a broad bill with a lot of moving parts. But the vote also inspired historic tax credit supporters in St. Louis to make sure Jefferson City knows just what the program has meant here.
“I’m here to make some calls,” said Michael Byrd, a principal at Core10 Architecture in the Central West End, as he walked into Space on Wednesday.
Byrd’s firm doesn’t rely on historic credits for its business, but he’s seen their value on a few of his projects, and just from walking his neighborhood in the Central West End. He’s also visited Jefferson City a few times and learned the importance of reminding lawmakers that behind these big programs in the state budget there are people. People not unlike them.
“Lawmakers are people. They can be influenced,” he said. “And it’s important to insist that they express their position to you.”
Byrd is one of about a dozen people making calls at Space on Wednesday afternoon, a mix of the firm’s employees, rehab professionals, and straight-up volunteers, like a pair of St. Louis University law students who read about the call party on Twitter and just showed up.
They all get a fact sheet with some key points to make, like the 43,000 jobs that a 2010 study found the historic tax credit has created in Missouri. They get a list of key lawmakers to call, including a couple of St. Louis-area senators who they hope to persuade not to support deep cuts. And the room rings with snippets of personalized arguments for the historic tax credit.
“I wanted to emphatically encourage you …”
“… in my neighborhood in the Central West End …”
“... the thing that scares me most about a cap that severe …”
Phoning lawmakers’ offices at 5 on a Wednesday afternoon doesn’t generate many actual lawmakers on the phone. Most of the calls wind up in voicemail, or with a receptionist or junior aide, many of whom don’t necessarily know their boss’s position on the matter. After the first call party, one senator called back and chatted for 20 minutes. A few aides called. Most offices didn’t respond.
On this day, though, Niemeier scores, getting a real-life member of the House of Representatives on the phone, a Republican from southwest Missouri who said he understood the program’s value to the state.
“He was actually pretty supportive,” Niemeier said.
That’s something, but hardly a guarantee. Supporters of the historic tax credit say they’ll keep pushing, and this coming Wednesday they’ve rented a bus to go to Jefferson City, to make their case face to face.
