Tax for pickleball restaurant unnecessary, City Council member says

If you go to the new pickleball place, be prepared to pay some extra sales tax.

The City Council on Tuesday established a taxing district in and around a Chicken N Pickle theme restaurant planned for the southeast corner of 13th and Greenwich.

In that district, the city will levy an additional 1.5 cents on every dollar of taxable sales for up to 15 years.

That will generate an estimated $2.3 million that will pass through to the owners of Chicken N Pickle to help with the cost of building their business. The city will get $230,000 for area street improvements.

The special tax area, called a “community improvement district,” is a funding tool generally deployed to help jump-start redevelopment of run-down or blighted areas.

Council member Bryan Frye was the only one to vote no on the pickleball tax and later, he questioned whether it’s appropriate for the city to use community improvement taxation in a growth area that isn’t having trouble attracting business on its own.

“It’s supposed to be used for areas that are not likely to get developed otherwise,” Frye said. “With everything else that’s going on in that part of town, I didn’t see it as necessary. ”

“It’s one of the most developable parts of town and continues to grow with more and more,” he said.

Council member Pete Meitzner acknowledged that the northeast is a growth area and said Chicken N Pickle will help continue and accelerate that success.

“This is a very important piece of the puzzle,” he said. “It’s just another sign of people wanting to invest in our city and this (community improvement district) is an important component for this to happen.”

The new Wichita restaurant will be the second in the chain, which started in Kansas City, Mo.

It will include a restaurant, rooftop bar and 12 courts for pickleball, six indoor and six outdoor. Pickleball is similar to tennis, but played with paddles on a smaller court.

The pickleball tax district was one of three community improvement districts approved by the council on Tuesday.

Council members also approved one for the so-called “Delano Catalyst” site, on 7.2 acres south and east of the new Advanced Learning Library under construction near McLean and Sycamore.

That district will charge an extra 2 cents on the dollar in sales tax for 22 years, to generate up to $3 million for the developers of a 90-room hotel, 180 apartments and a 5,000-square-foot commercial building.

The third taxing district covers the area around the former Spaghetti Works restaurant south of Douglas and west of the BNSF railroad tracks downtown.

That additional sales tax, also 2 cents on the dollar for 22 years, is expected to generate about $3.1 million to help pay the developers to convert the restaurant building into 41 apartments, plus build an additional 37,000 square feet of office and retail space between the railroad tracks and Naftzger Park.

As part of that project, the city is planning to rebuild the park to serve as a “front yard” for the development. The community improvement district will generate about $311,000 for park maintenance.

This story was originally published January 9, 2018 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Tax for pickleball restaurant unnecessary, City Council member says."