City of South Bend to consider termination of developer's tax abatement

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The South Bend Common Council will meet with developer David Matthews at its Monday meeting to consider a resolution to terminate the property tax abatement for the 300 E. LaSalle Apartments and East Race Market.

This comes after Matthews LLC met with the council on June 24th, asking for an extension on the designation period for the company’s tax abatement, but the council voted no.

Now, the council is looking to terminate that tax abatement. They claim Matthews LLC has an overdue balance of $512,459.58 in unpaid real property taxes for 300 East LaSalle Apartments and overdue balance of $105,241.16 in unpaid real property taxes for 401 E. Colfax Avenue, but Matthews LLC Project Manager, Velvet Canada, says the taxes are so high is because they did not receive the full tax abatement they were promised.

“So, the reason the taxes are so astronomically high, like 11 thousand times what they should be, is because they weren’t in that designation period. So therefore, we are not receiving the full tax abatement that was promised in the beginning when we had said, ‘hey here’s what we’re going to do, here’s the building, and this is how we’re going to make this building work,’” said Canada.

The city said they reached out to Matthews in June, but did not receive a response. They say that will be addressed at the meeting on Monday.