Vacant Store Research Project

EMPTY COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES IN THE HISTORIC DISTRICT
one deep dive that proved reassuring

 

The number of empty commercial storefronts in the Bristol historic district has increased over past years and the pandemic has only put more stress on our local businesses. The Board of the Friends of Historic Bristol was as concerned as the rest of you. We were brainstorming possible influences and wondered if any municipal real estate tax policy, such as tax abatements or exemptions for unoccupied commercial properties, could be a factor enabling owners to keep their properties empty. To test our hypothesis, we developed a multi-phase work plan to identify the street address of empty commercial properties, identify the property owners from the Town's online Property Assessments database and, finally, cross check those property owners on the Town's online Real Estate and Sewer Tax Rolls for any special or unusual abatements or exemptions.

 The portion of the historic district reviewed included the geographic area from Thames Street to Wood Street (west to east direction) and Washington Street to Walley Street (north to south direction). This area consists of the primary commercial blocks along Thames, State, Hope and Wood Streets, and mixed use residential/commercial and primarily residential blocks elsewhere. As is typical of a historic New England seaside village, commercial, municipal and mixed use buildings are intermixed with residential buildings, and primarily residential areas have some commercial storefronts, frequently on the first floor of a residential property.

 Our walk-around physical review identified approximately 24 unoccupied commercial storefronts. A number of the unoccupied commercial spaces on side streets were in residential structures and many appeared to have been specialty shops long abandoned.

 With street addresses in hand, the online Property Assessment database was searched and property owners identified by the property street address. In a number of cases, the physical street number did not match the property record street address, so some additional review of adjacent properties was required to identify a specific property of interest.

The final step required a search of the online Real Estate and Sewer Tax Rolls for owners of the specific properties for any tax abatements or exemptions. Where exemptions were indicated, they were denoted by an Exemption Code. Unfortunately, the exemption codes are not listed in the Tax Rolls database. An email to the Town's very helpful tax assessor resulted in a speedy response with an Account Exemptions Summary document for tax year 2021 listing 41 exemption categories, exemption amounts, and the count of exemptions in each category. We found no exemption categories for unoccupied commercial properties nor any related exemptions in the summary document. Any nonspecific exemption categories were reviewed for the total exemption amount and number of exemptions and dismissed for both low total amount and a very small count.

 So, what did we find? Of the 24 properties examined in this study, we did find a number of exemptions assigned to the property owners. Those few exemptions, per the Exemption Summary, were coded as age or veteran related exemptions. Our review also indicated the use of standard exemption amounts for many of the exemption categories.

 We did not find any property tax exemptions for the vacant commercial properties that could be considered as an abatement for lack of occupancy. Therefore, we can conclude from our review that the Town, in general, is not providing financial support via tax abatements to property owners with vacant commercial storefronts. This result was reassuring. FHBRI wishes to thank the Tax Assessor for her help.