Jan. 15–North Augusta is close to an agreement with Crowne Plaza to become the hotel franchise in the Ballpark Village Project, according to the latest version of the Project Jackson Master Development Agreement, on which there will be a public hearing during a special called city council meeting Tuesday night.

"Hotel franchise envisioned is Crowne Plaza, a nationally-recognized full-service flag," says the new version of the agreement. Before, the name of the hotel had been left blank.

Crowne is a top brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group, which includes Holiday Inn and others.

"Our negotiations with IHG and the developer/franchisee are to a point where all parties were comfortable putting the name in the public documents," City Administrator Todd Glover said Saturday.

A timeline included in the agreement calls for all projects to be completed by Dec. 31, 2018. That includes the stadium for the GreenJackets baseball team, the hotel, conference facilities, various residential developments, and office and retail space.

The agreement calls for the hotel developer to build a minimum of 180 rooms, plus 11,700 square feet of restaurant, bar and amenity retail space.

The budget for the hotel and various "improvements" related to it is $40 million.

The city will provide utilities and street lighting and will construct roads around the hotel area. The hotel developer will be responsible for everything else. The city also gets to review the hotel design and layout.

At Tuesday's meeting, the city council is expected to consider the second reading of the agreement and will hold a public hearing. It will also consider the Tax Increment Financing ordinance and the Municipal Improvement District measure.

Inside the improvement district, the city is assured of tax revenue from previously agreed-upon assessments of project features such as the hotel. Developers must pay taxes on those assessments regardless of what buildings are appraised for after they're complete. For example, if the hotel developer agrees to build a $40 million hotel, but it is appraised for $35 million once complete, the hotel operator must pay tax on $40 million. That lets the city plan on a certain amount of tax reveune to repay bonds that eventually will be issued to cover the cost of Ballpark Village.

The TIF measure reflects an agreement among the city, Aiken County and the county public school district to allow the city to collect the tax revenue on the incremental difference between rising property values and values frozen at 1996 levels for 30 years to help pay for Project Jackson.

That agreement represents about $25 million from the county and about $13 million from the school board. Project Jackson is expected to cost about $143 million.

Tuesday's meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the Muncipal Center.

Reach James Folker at (706) 823-3338 or [email protected].