OGDEN — Officials from Ogden’s Redevelopment Agency say the next fiscal year will largely be a continuum of previous efforts, with a focus on pushing forward several high-profile projects that have already begun.

Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2022, which begins July 1, includes $10.7 million for the city’s RDA. The figure is a relatively slight increase of about $661,000, or nearly 7%, from FY 2021.

But the RDA is funded primarily through tax increment received from various redevelopment districts in operation around the city. The districts work by freezing the tax valuation for all taxable properties inside a specific area of land that the city has tabbed for reinvestment. For a certain amount of time or up to a certain dollar amount, future increases in property tax revenue are used in the redevelopment effort, an oft-used development incentive called tax increment financing.

The TIF money is typically offered to developers as a motivation to build, and it can be used for things like street and utility improvements, hazardous waste removal, property acquisition and the demolition of blighted buildings. In Ogden, RDAs usually collect the tax increases from the city, the county and the school district.

Ideally, when the duration or dollar thresholds are met, new development in an RDA has increased tax valuations in the area and the governmental agencies see a new stream of cash that may not have otherwise been there.

The RDA also receives contributions from the city’s Business Depot Ogden lease revenue cache. The city collects lease revenue from tenants operating out of the BDO, splitting the money 50-50 in a public-private partnership with Salt Lake City-based Boyer Group. After expenses, the city takes in about $8 million per year, a figure that doesn’t include the property tax revenue there.

The entire aim of the RDA is essentially to rebuild areas of the community that need it while accentuating portions that are already working well.

“In general, our whole purpose is to remove impediments and to build on bright spots,” said Brandon Cooper, deputy director of Ogden’s Community and Economic Development department.

Over the next year, Cooper said that ethic will be applied to several areas of the city.

Cooper said one of the biggest goals for the agency is to complete environmental remediation work at the site of the old Swift Building and begin development efforts there. The city bought the Swift property in 2017 from Utah-Smith, a business entity connected to Bert Smith, the late founder of local retailer Smith & Edwards Co. The city has long sought to redevelop the land, but the work was delayed after the discovery of a large quantity of chemical materials stored inside the building. The Environmental Protection Agency began cleaning the site in late March 2019 and wrapped up one extensive cleanup project later that year.

Located at 390 W. Exchange Road, just north of the 24th Street viaduct, the Swift Building was 103 years old when the city began demolition work last year. The warehouse was once home to the defunct Swift meatpacking plant. With its large red “Swift” sign and its prominent location near one of the city’s main entrance points, the building has been an icon in Ogden for decades.

The property has long been viewed by city officials as a vital component of the West Ogden redevelopment site known as the Trackline Economic Development Area. The tax-incentivized city project includes 122 acres between 24th Street and Middleton Road from the railroad tracks to G Avenue. Beginning in the 1930s, the area was home to the Ogden livestock yards and was once a thriving economic hub. When the stockyards were shut down in the 1970s, the area quickly grew dilapidated and had been mostly uninhabited until Trackline was established in 2013.

The development now includes a mix of commercial, manufacturing and light industrial space, including a 51-acre outdoor recreation business park called the Ogden Business Exchange, where the Atwater facility will be located. A mix of local and international companies now do business out of the park, including Enve Composites, the Selle Royal Company, Roosters Brewing Company and Ogden’s Own Distillery.

The Ogden City Council approved a $1.8 million deal in October 2019 to sell the Swift site to Atwater Infrastructure Partners, which plans to build a 125,000-square-foot aerospace manufacturing facility there.

Cooper said in-depth development work is also set to commence over the next year on the city’s Wonder Block project. Located just southwest of the Ogden Municipal Building, the development site, which was once home to the large Hostess and Wonder Bread factory, is to eventually include nearly 300 residential units on top of what could be as much as 63,000 square feet of retail space. Office space and a boutique hotel with about 100 rooms will also be part of the project, along with a new 754-stall parking structure.

Similarly, Cooper said work is expected to begin inside the city block bordered by 24th and 25th streets on the north and south, and Monroe Boulevard and Gramercy Avenue on the east and west. Once home to a Rite Aid drugstore and several other retail establishments, Ogden City has been trying to redevelop the area for years now. The city’s current vision for the Rite Aid block involves a venture called “Capitol Square,” which includes a mix of housing types and office and retail space. A grocery store, a plaza, condos, townhomes, apartments and improved access to the Oasis Community Garden and Lester Park are all envisioned for the area.

Cooper said other goals for the agency in the next year include standing up a remote work hub on 25th Street and implementing components of the city’s recently adopted downtown master plan, dubbed “Make Ogden,” among other things. But the main aim is for the real boots-on-the-ground work to start on the previously mentioned efforts.

“There’s a whole slew of things in the Make Ogden Master Plan that will require … the city’s attention,” Cooper said. “(But) our goals … are really to close up and put a bow on some of these projects that you’ve been hearing about for a number of years now.”