A tax increment financing district created to support redevelopment of the ABLA Homes, several interconnected public housing developments located in the blocks between Morgan and Ashland and either side of Roosevelt Road, will result in $87 million in potential spending over a 35-year lifetime, a draft amendment to the district’s plan shows.

The Roosevelt-Racine TIF came online in 1998, a year prior to the start of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation, an effort to remake much of ABLA and the city’s other public housing areas.

The new budget and timeframe are increases over the district’s current set of assumptions, which list $47 million in spending over a 23-year stretch.

Tax increment financing districts reserve property taxes generated by economic growth above a rate frozen at the district’s birth — the “increment” in the TIF acronym — for a wide-range of expenses.

The Community Development Commission was scheduled to read the amendment into the public record at its July 13 meeting and set dates for further public review. Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) said he had the item deferred pending additional discussions about the TIF district and its purpose.

Recent community debates about Roosevelt Square, as the development replacing much of the ABLA Homes is called, have focused on the volume of rental housing versus for-sale units built and planned for the project.

A 2,441-unit project, Roosevelt Square thus far includes 245 replacement public housing units, 159 for-sale condos, two market-rate rentals, 111 affordably priced rentals and 74 affordably priced for-sale homes.

Representatives from Related Midwest, the real estate firm hired by the Chicago Housing Authority for the ABLA remake, said at a meeting about the TIF amendment in May that their next phase of building included 193 for-sale units and two 60-unit rental buildings that were originally planned as condo structures.

The latter decision has drawn the ire of a number of homeowners in the area but Related Midwest has said construction hinges on the TIF extension in addition to market conditions.

As debates about when different types of units are phased into Roosevelt Square continue, the city and Related Midwest must contend with the fact that the Roosevelt Square TIF’s net assets only amounted to about $4.2 million by the end of 2008, according to its most recent annual report.

The new budget assumption of up to $87 million in spending is thus not locked in yet. But with the additional 12 years, the amendment assumes that the area will generate enough new economic activity to throw off funds to pay for, among other expenses:

$27 million in “public works and improvements,” up from $18 million in the district’s current plan;

$15 million in property acquisition, remediation, demolition and others costs, up from $7.5 million;

$12 million in job training and welfare-to-work programs, up from $4.5 million;

$10 million in “financing costs,” a number that doesn’t have a comparable line-item in the previous TIF budget.

Further details about the specifics of that spending were unavailable.

Asked about the near doubling of the budget, Molly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Community Development, said the initial $47 million figure was drawn up “a long time ago.”

“We know it’s going to take longer than it was first thought. The market is a problem,” she said. “It poses significant challenges to us, like it does every development.”

“We are confident we will be able to meet the costs of the redevelopment and we are committed to making it happen,” Sullivan added. She noted that construction costs continue to increase.

Rachel Weber, an urban planning professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago who studies tax increment financing, said using TIF dollars to support public housing redevelopment near the Loop was an obvious move on the city’s part at the start of the Plan for Transformation. Putting tax-exempt land owned by CHA into private hands for new housing produced “instant increment,” she said, in TIF coffers.

The same can’t be said in a stalled economy.

“I think TIF in some ways is a tool that works very well at the beginning of construction and development booms, because you need to go from zero to 60 in a short period of time to create increment to fund the expenses and improvements you hope to make,” she said. “When you’re not seeing a lot of price appreciation, the tool itself loses some if its power.”

It is unlikely that Related Midwest would push forward without having TIF support for the project lined up, Weber said, as competitors at other CHA rehab sites have already benefited from such spending.

A representative from Related Midwest could not be reached.

In addition to changes the Roosevelt-Racine district’s timeframe and budget, the revised plan adds new language about property acquisition within the borders of the 212-acre district.

Up to 31 parcels could be acquired “by purchase, exchange, donation, lease, eminent domain or through the Tax Reactivation Program,” the new language says.

All of parcels slated for potential acquisition are located either on the south side of Roosevelt Road between Loomis and Ashland, or the east side of Ashland between Washburne and 14th Place.

A land-use plan shows the Roosevelt parcels slated for future residential projects while the Ashland side shows a mixture of commercial and residential.