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HB 96 Proponent Testimony — David Williams, Board Chair, Heritage Ohio Inc.

Summary

HB 96 proponent testimony from David Williams, Board Chair of Heritage Ohio, to the Development Committee. The testimony encourages support for the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit (OHPTC), the Transformative Mixed Use Development Credit (TMUD), Opportunity Zones and Brownfield funding. It states that since 2007 the OHPTC program has had 718 projects approved in 91 communities, with $733 million in credits paid out. It lists suggested improvements for OHPTC, including raising the aggregate cap to $120 million a year and providing a 35% credit for small projects.

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“HB 96 Proponent Testimony — David Williams, Board Chair, Heritage Ohio Inc.” Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/2025-03-05-development-testimony-testimony-2454-ddfec3c398/, SHA-256 24884b5e2fe25eb914f8aa24c3648c06abd55e44c3768d1b2c596c18af5af85e.

Full text

                                      800 E 17TH Street Columbus, Ohio 43211
                                                        www. heritageohio.org



HB 96 Proponent Testimony / Interested Part
David Williams, Board Chair, Heritage Ohio Inc.
Thank you Chair Hoops, Vice Chair Lorenz, Ranking Member Abdullahi,
and members of Development Committee
I am Dave Williams, Board Chair of Heritage Ohio, and Vice President of
Real Estate Development at Cross Street Partners.
Heritage Ohio is the statewide nonprofit that supports historic preservation
and downtown revitalization through the Main Street Approach™.
We are here to encourage your support for proven economic
development tools that are essential for the redevelopment of our Ohio
towns and cities, large and small. These include the Ohio Historic
Preservation Tax Credit (OHPTC); the Transformative Mixed Use
Development Credit (TMUD); Opportunity Zones; and Brownfield funding.
Each of these tools, either separately or combined, is needed as we
revitalize our legacy communities. For example, since 2007, the OHPTC
program has helped adaptively reuse 442 of Ohio’s historic buildings, with
718 projects approved in 91 communities. These once-vacant and
underutilized buildings are now income-producing, tax-paying community
assets.
Total investment for these completed projects has passed $6 Billion, with
$733 million in credits paid out. This is a return on investment of 8:1. These
dollars are buying materials and hiring skilled labor with the result that
approximately 1/3 of the tax revenue comes back to the state in income
BEFORE the credit is even paid out.
All Historic Tax Credit projects are certified as 100% complete before any
credit dollars are taken. Like TMUD, this is a tax credit which requires an
economic impact analysis as part of the allocation process. We know
from professional studies and experience that these projects pay back
                                     800 E 17TH Street Columbus, Ohio 43211
                                                       www. heritageohio.org




with increased local and state revenues. You can see the catalytic effect
these rehabilitated buildings have had in our communities.
But in some cases, historic tax credits alone are not enough. In Van Wert,
where Van Wert Forward and the Van Wert Foundation is restoring their
downtown block by block, it required eight different sources of funding,
including Historic Tax Credits, New Market Tax Credits, Ohio Opportunity
Zone and TMUD, among others. For the Dayton Arcade, a $164,000,000
mixed-use adaptive reuse of a building that sat vacant for 30 years, 48
sources of funding were required over three phases.
Without these programs, projects like these and many others will not
happen.
Ohio has the third-highest number of historic properties on the national
register in the nation. This is one of Ohio’s “natural resources” that we can
capitalize on to attract and retain businesses to our communities, as well
as our youth, our talent, and our entrepreneurs, with beautiful and vibrant
downtowns and main streets of all sizes.
We have a number of suggested improvements for OHPTC but key ones
are:
  1. Raise the aggregate cap to $120 million a year and the per project
     cap to 10 million to address inflation.
  2. Provide a 35% credit for small projects or ones that are in jurisdictions
     of 300,000 residents or less to assist with the challenges projects in
     smaller communities face.
  3. Permit a rolling application process and permit projects to
     automatically be resubmitted the following year if they meet the
     minimum score requirement.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and I will be happy to answer
any questions.

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