Just a few vacant storefronts so far in the Empty-Core Central Business District with Light Rail passing along the line through Heat-Island Main Street here in The Old Donut-Hole. ASU Tempe is five stops west - a world-away. Fake facades at 10 separate downtown locations from a 1967 "Beautification project" are scheduled to be improved after a contractor is selected for estimated costs of $500-$600,000 to be completed within 120 consecutive calendar days after the Notice to Proceed. Sealed bids due July 12, 2018.
That's progress on-the-ground so far in the schemes of Mega-Millionaire Mesa Mormon Republican AZ State Senator Bob Worsley playing his hand gambling in private real estate speculation while holding the public trust in elected office at the same time gaining control of the commercial property market here in downtown Mesa with the formation of a number of holding companies registered with the Arizona Corporate Commission. (those details have been outlined).
What's the potential upside for the $20 millions he said his wife talked people into? Does that mean he's using and leveraging other people's money based on developer agreements he's arranged with city officials?
Worsley's hands may be tied-up to do more double-dealing gambling in real estate while holding public office - over last weekend he announced he has withdrawn from a campaign to get re-elected, citing "a caustic political climate" in a guest op ed piece published in The East Valley Tribune.
He has six more months in the eyes of public scrutiny before he's out of office.
Let's get back to OZones where after 40 years of neglect, downtown Mesa qualifies as a distressed low-income community.
That's after all the over-hype and hoopla of downtown Mesa as a vibrant and exciting Arts-and-Entertainment District when $100 Million was invested to open the Mesa Arts Center in 2005. The downtown vision, re-imagined and re-invented time-and-time again never delivered a Sense of Place.
In 2016 voters REJECTED another try at transformation to benefit special interests.
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Commentary: Real Estate Investors Will Love This Last-Minute Change to the Tax Plan
Blogger Note: It is important to note U.S. Treasury/IRS has not certified or defined what's the structure of the Opportunity Funds where investments will get locked-in.
The Trump-GOP tax plan creates new loopholes for real estate investors and makes the tax code more complicated.
The 1986 law solved a lot of problems. In the first half of the 1980s, Americans had lost faith in their tax system much as they have today. The tax rules encouraged investors to do all sorts of things with their money that did nothing to build the economy, but rather only made sense as tax shelters.
The rules related to depreciation and losses were so generous that anyone with money and a decent accountant could very quickly write off the costs of their investments, including ones in which they were just passive investors, and use any losses to offset their other income. Real estate developers built office buildings that no one needed.
Business ventures were created to produce losses that only existed on paper and sheltered real income from taxes. . . . Congress made exceptions to the loss rules, for example, allowing taxpayers to report losses from real estate investments even when their own money wasn’t at risk. . . . All versions of the Trump tax plan have included some type of break for “pass-through” businesses, so-called because their profits are passed through to their owners and subject to the personal income tax rather than the corporate income tax.
The final bill provides a deduction for pass-through income that is supposed to benefit those business owners who create jobs . . . "Source > http://fortune.com/2017/12/22
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Competing with - and the first to break ground months after Worsley's $20-Million-Dollar bet on bringing luxury up-scale above-market development proposals to the historic one-story mercantile Central Business District - was a Massive Mormon Temple Makeover in the planning stages for years that was 'revealed' with no price tag attached - on this investment site on the SEC of Main Street and Mesa Drive east of the green LDS Temple complex.