The South Billings Urban Renewal Association (SBURA) Board has reviewed this application for tax increment assistance and recommends to the City Council, upon project completion, a maximum of $783,510 of Tax Increment Finance funds from the South Billings Boulevard Urban Renewal District (SBBURD) to the Yellowstone Ice Foundation for pad site improvements of a new ice skating facility at the recreation facility at Amend Park. Actual reimbursement will be based upon 100% of the actual costs incurred for qualified expenses for the improvements made, subject to the following conditions:

1.) The Applicant shall sign a development agreement with the City of Billings and SBURA within 180 days of City Council's approval.
2.) This TIFD reimbursement is the maximum amount that can be received pending satisfactory submission of all paid invoices showing the completion of expenditures related to this project.
3.) The project reimbursement will occur after construction is completed.
4.) If funds are not available, reimbursement will be carried over to the next fiscal year.

The SBURA Board considered the Yellowstone Ice Foundation application at a Special Board Meeting on March 20, 2025 and voted unanimously to recommend $783,510 of tax increment assistance. The Yellowstone Ice Foundation has entered into a lease agreement with the City of Billings (approved at the March 24 Council Meeting) to build and operate an ice skating facility for the Billings community and region as part of a multi-part recreation facility plan for land adjacent to Amend Park. The ice facility will contain two sheets of ice for public skating, ice hockey, figure skating, and other recreational ice activities.

Total project costs for the ice facility are estimated to be $16.5 million. The total recommended amount from the SBURA Board of $783,510 is for site preparation, system development fees, structural fill labor and materials, mechanical courtyard improvements, fences and gates, and foundation work. It is approximately a 1:21 ratio of investment of public vs private funds based on the total project cost. This is well above the ratio recommended in the City TIF policy, which is a minimum of 1:5.

The City has budgeted just under $4 million of SBBURD TIF funds for campus infrastructure, to include site prep, moving the Grey Eagle ditch, parking, stormwater management, landscaping and stubbing city utilities to within 5 feet of the skating facility pad site. These improvements are to serve and facilitate the development of the ice skating facility. The concept of this entire recreation facility project is to support public/private partnerships to enable the community to have a variety of recreational facilities. The concept is to have the City, utilizing the TIF funding mechanism, to provide a master facility plan and the core infrastructure to serve a variety of recreational uses on the city property adjacent to Amend Park. Therefore, the City is funding an indoor court facility and all of the site improvements to enable several additional recreation uses on the property, the ice skating facility being one of them. The City Council should carefully consider additional expenditures of TIF funds outside of the indoor court facility and all of the site improvements for the private pad site development that is occurring with the ice skating facility, and will occur with other pad site development.

Table 1 below details the proposed expenses that the SBURA is recommending be funded with TIF funds for the private ice facility. While some of these expenses may qualify for tax increment assistance per state law, and some might be considered to qualify when the City has supported private development projects with public benefit, the fact that the City is investing in all of the infrastructure to serve the ice skating facility staff finds this request harder to justify from a TIF expenditure perspective. And some of the proposed expenses are difficult to justify in this situation under City TIF Policy and MCA.

Some proposed expenses in past projects that are similar to this have been to support construction in areas of poor soils and property that was utilized for uses like gravel mining, which involves significant remediation and stabilization of soil to facilitate construction. None of these issues are present in this case. The City also has not historically paid for project costs like System Development Fees, but these are included in the SBURA recommendation at $91,000. There is more detailed information relating to the project costs included in the Yellowstone Ice TIF Application, attached to this memo.

TABLE 1. 

Recommended Improvements	Estimated Costs	City TIF Policy	Urban Renewal Plan	MT Code Annotated
Site Staking and Testing	$29,000	Unclear	*Section 13,14	Unclear
System Development Fees	$91,000	Not usually an approved expense	*Section 13,14	7-15-4288
Geotechnical Report, Geo Textiles, Structural Fill Materials, Structural Fill Labor, Deep Foundation Ram	$416,970	Section 1 Usually associated with soil remediation due to unbuildable conditions	*Section 13,14	7-15-4288
Mechanical Courtyard, Mechanical Courtyard Walls	$217,540	Not a usual approved expense	*Section 13,14	7-15-4288 - More in relation to public infrastructure

Fences and Gates

$30,000

Section 1 (c)

*Section 13,14

7-15-4288

* The SBBURD Urban Renewal Plan specifically references recreation facilities in Sections 13 and 14, including an ice skating rink.

Since this property is City owned, there is no property tax value increase with the improvements. However, the overall City recreation facility and the private participation to fund the ice skating facility and future potential other recreational uses is a benefit to Billings as far as economic impacts, access to recreational activities and sports tourism, recreation programs, school activities, and many other positive outcomes for the City, County and the Region.

 

Stakeholders for this application include the property owners in the SBBURD, the applicant, Billings, Yellowstone County, and the region. The SBURA Board meeting is a public meeting and the City Council meeting is a public meeting as well, so the public has multiple opportunities to comment on this application as it is reviewed and acted upon. The Planning and Community Services Department did not receive any public comments on this application before this memo was completed. The SBURA Board minutes of when this application was reviewed and recommended for approval to the City Council are attached to this memo.

City Council may:

• Approve the recommendation from the SBURA board for the expenditure of these tax increment finance (TIF) funds; or,
• Modify the recommendation from the SBURA board for the expenditure of these TIF funds; or,
• Disapprove the recommendations from the SBURA board for the expenditure of these TIF funds.

The recommendation is for a maximum of $783,510 to be reimbursed to Yellowstone Ice Foundation for elements of constructing an ice skating facility at the recreation facility campus at Amend Park. This project is expected to be completed in FY 26 and there are sufficient funds budgeted in FY26 to cover this reimbursement.