Easton officials ask county council for new developer tax breaks

EASTON, Pa. — Easton officials Thursday asked Northampton County Council to approve new Local Economic Redevelopment Tax Assistance incentives for nine lots in the city, and renew incentives for 82 more.

The proposed additions to Easton’s LERTA program would benefit developers who plan to build a hotel and restaurants near Centre Square, affordable housing and a new “maker space.”

“From a redevelopment standpoint, these are areas we want to focus on, and the uses are uses we want to focus on,” Easton Community and Economic Development Director John Kingsley told a county council committee.

The LERTA incentive program offers a temporary property tax cut for new construction on land designated as “deteriorated,” as a way to attract someone looking to build something better.

For the first year after a building becomes taxable, its owner pays no property taxes on the value of the finished project. Taxes on the land on which it sits, however, still are due in full.

The abated property taxes are phased in over the following decade: In the second year of a covered building’s taxable life, its owner will pay 10% of the usual tax on its value, followed by 20% the year after. After 11 years, the incentive expires.

Municipalities, school districts and counties each separately approve cuts to their portions of property taxes. Easton City Council and the Easton Area School District both already signed off on the new additions.

A previous county ordinance authorizing its part of the LERTA benefit for sites in Easton expired in 2022, Kingsley said. As a result, County Council will vote to re-approve tax breaks for the 82 previously designated plots as it considers adding nine more to their ranks.

Council will vote on the measure at its April 18 meeting.

Projects already proposed

Though LERTA tax benefits go to anything built on a specified plot of land, all nine lots set to join the program already are associated with specific projects, Kingsley said.

Most of the land considered for a new LERTA — just under 1.5 acres — is controlled by Greater Shiloh Church, which plans two affordable housing developments there.

One project, at 508 W. Canal St., will stand up affordable housing to replace the shuttered Paradise Club, which Kingsley called a “nuisance bar.”

Plans call for 60 one-, two- and three-bedroom units ranging from 800 to 1,250 square feet.

The church also plans to build affordable housing on four plots in far Southeast Easton. Unlike the Canal Street apartments, the eight three-bedroom, semi-detached homes at 130-134 Philips St. would be offered for sale, not for rent.

Two of the sites on track to receive new LERTA benefits lie in the southeast corner of Easton’s Centre Square.

‘Exemplary properties’

One soon will house a new seven-story, 41-room hotel at 1-6 Centre Square, built by developer Two Square Properties LLC. Easton officials have been trying to draw a new hotel to the city for years, Kingsley said.

Just a few feet south, 8 Centre Square is set to become two restaurants and seven apartments.

A final project, at 653 and 671 Bushkill St., will build a new business incubator and “maker space,” Kingsley said, to give fledgling manufacturing businesses a place to operate and grow.

All together, the projects will cost more than millions of dollars to build, city officials said, and add an estimated $54,000 per year to the county’s tax rolls once their tax benefits expire.

County Executive Lamont McClure, who criticized a previous LERTA authorization for parts of Upper Mount Bethel Township, called the nine Easton properties “exemplary properties for the LERTA designation.”

McClure proposed a modified program for the Upper Mount Bethel incentive program that would award tax breaks to specific projects, rather than whatever is built on a given plot of land.

He did not request changes to the Easton program, which Kingsley described as “about as standard a LERTA as you’re going to come across.”