Even if you're for the Walmart project in Baltimore's Remington section, like me, maybe you can agree that the one-off tax breaks associated with so many city developments should not apply here. Baltimore, slowly being taken over by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, needs all the for-profit, tax-paying corporate citizens it can get. There's a dubious argument to be made in favor of giving tax breaks to a manufacturer or marquee hotel development. But there is no argument at all to be made in favor of one-company tax breaks for pure retail projects.
So I asked Jay Brodie, chief executive of the Baltimore Development Corp., if the Remington Walmart and Lowe's or its developer may be getting tax abatement, payment "in lieu of" tax or other one-off breaks. Brodie's reply: The project "is in the Enterprise Zone and so is entitled to those credits. No other incentives have been asked for or offered."
That's good. Remington is the kind of place enterprise-zone credits were designed for, and they go to any project locating within the zone. So they're not a special emolument just for Walmart and Lowe's. Under Maryland's law, the project will get an 80 percent property-tax credit on investment to renovate and rehab the site. The credit starts diminishing after five years and disappears after 10.