Harrisonburg is putting financial incentives in place to encourage development in downtown Harrisonburg. According to the Daily News Record (DNR) on November 14, 2007, City Council is considering extending tax break incentives to developers who are building new structures downtown. Here's the math, as I see it, per the article....

A developer invests $10M in constructing a new building to get eight year waiver of tax assessments. If the assessed value were also $10M, the total waived taxes would be $472,000 ($10M / 100 * .59 * 8). That comes out at a nearly 5% savings over 8 years --- not bad!

This new proposal would be similar to the city's existing program for renovating downtown buildings. These financial incentives led to the re-development of the City Exchange building (now apartments and a restaurant). Per the DNR, "Real estate developer Barry Kelley said the historic building incentives were critical to his projects, including the renovation of the City Exchange building into apartments and a restaurant."