A long-discussed St. Charles commercial/residential development along the Missouri River and a planned Weldon Spring office complex are among St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann’s choices for tax-exempt bonds under the federal economic stimulus program.

Ehlmann

Under the stimulus program, counties across the country were assigned a certain amount of tax-exempt bonding capacity; the St. Charles County total is $22.3 million. That’s in addition to the direct grants for various projects that have gotten a lot more publicity.

Ehlmann chose to assign about $6.2 million in bonds to the city of St. Charles for preparatory work for the $1.5 billion, 300-acre project that Michael Sellenschuetter’s Riverwalk Development LLC proposed along the Missouri between Interstate 70 and the Family Arena.

The project, which has been on the drawing boards for several years, would take 20 years to build.

Sellenschuetter also is expected to seek some other aid from the city of St. Charles and the state but has yet to submit a detailed request. Nadine Boon, the city economic development chief, said Sellenschuetter now is calling the project Harbor San Carlos.

Tentative plans call for the bond money to be used to pay for dredging a canal for pleasure boats, acquiring property, cleaning up an area around a quarry and some foot bridges to the county-run park on Bangert Island in the river. The city had sought $14.5 million in bonding capacity for the project.

Ehlmann agreed to Weldon Spring’s request for $10 million in tax-exempt bonds to help finance the  132,000-square-foot West Highland office building at 500 Technology Drive near Highway 40/Interstate 64.

The city approved the building’s site plan in May 2008 but the project has been on hold because of the “credit crisis that occurred immediately thereafter,” City Administrator Michael Padella said in a letter to Ehlmann.

Padella said today that the tax-exempt bonds would give the developer, Balke Brown Associates, a better chance of assembling the $24 million needed for the project.

Ehlmann’s other bond issue selections:

* $2.1 million to St. Charles for road, water, sewer and electrical work that would be offered as part of the package designed to lure a solar panel component parts manufacturer that is considering locating in the Fountain Lakes Commerce Center.

St. Charles is competing with sites in Alabama and Tennessee to snag the $400-million plant.

* $2 million to Dardenne Prairie to help spur a high-density commercial-residential project at Highway N and Post Road.  The overall project would cost about $20 million, according to the city’s request to Ehlmann.

* $2 million to Duckett Creek Sanitary District to finance a sewer plant and related work to provide sewer service to two churches, two schools and a housing development south of Highway N and west of Hopewell Road.

Greg Prestemon, who oversees the county Industrial Development Authority, said he assumed that most of the bonds in the program in the county would be issued by that agency. However, he emphasized that the county’s selection of the projects does not automatically mean that the money involved will flow.

Each project still would have to attract a buyer for the bonds, he pointed out. The tax-exempt status is an inducement to both borrowers and lenders that will make affected bonds more likely to sell, he said.

County Finance Director Bob Schnur said Ehlmann had rejected St. Charles’ request for about $5 million in bonds to help with financing the Streets of St. Charles residential-commercial project at the old Noah’s Ark site and for $400,000 for a residential loft project in the Frenchtown neighborhood. 

In another aspect of the stimulus program, Schnur said, the federal government is expected to pay 45 percent of the interest costs of some of the bonds to be sold to finance the revamped emergency communications system approved by county voters last month.