Economic development officials are finalizing an incentive program they hope will spur new office and hotel development in Montgomery County.
The BUILD program would pay property owners up to 50 percent of the real property taxes their new Class A office space and hotels generate in the first 10 years.
The county’s Department of Economic Development is scheduled to brief a Council committee on the program on Monday.
“The program is designed to create new construction jobs and increase commercial tax base by selectively spurring construction of Class A office space and hotels,” reads the briefing.
Property owners part of the program would be paid back through an annual grant. The amount in the grant would be determined by “the overall project impact.”
DED and county staff are finalizing a program description and application process.
Meanwhile, the DED has expanded its MOVE program. It started MOVE last year as a way to help smaller start-up companies pay the rent for existing county office space.
The program started by offering $4 per square foot rental assistance for the first year on new commercial leases for newly formed companies or companies that decide to relocate to the county.
The leases had to be for least three years and for at least 2,000 square feet of Class A or Class B office space.
On Feb. 1, the program expanded to offer $8 per square foot in rental assistance and to leases up to 10,000 square feet.
According to an October DED report, the MOVE program doled out $65,164 in rental assistance to five companies over its first six months. That was good for 16,291 square feet of leased space and 41 new jobs.
The county lured e-marketing firm L-Soft International from Landover to the renovated office building at 7550 Wisconsin Avenue with $20,000 in MOVE program funds.
There was a 14.9 percent office vacancy rate in the county as of October.
DED officials are also expected to brief council members on the county’s Kitchen Incubator program, which it hopes will provide a low-cost, low-risk way for local food businesses to get established in a shared kitchen facility.
The county partnered with D.C.-based Union Kitchen and Bethesda-based development firm Streetsense to look for potential incubator sites, come up with a management structure and identify training programs. According to the briefing, the pre-development phase of the incubator will be done in March.
