The Rio Nuevo Board Approves a $15 million Budget for 2023
The Rio Nuevo Board unanimously approved the 2023 budget for their fiscal year July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023. The Board expects that its sales tax revenue base to be approximately $1.25 million per month, making it close to historical collections.
The Board acknowledged they hope to have approximately $3 million to invest in downtown projects in Fiscal Year 23, following the completion of the TCC renovations.
The Board also offered to consider helping the owners of the Boxyard on 4th Avenue launch a similar operation at 6th Avenue and Broadway, which will require a significant amount of utility work to enable development on that corner. More detailed plans for the container venue will be heard in June.
The Rio Nuevo Board has approved numerous food and beverage assistance projects in the last several weeks including: Tabu, La Chingada, Cruda, Ceres, The Neighborhood, Highwire, The Citizen Hotel, Sand Reckoner Winery, The Cadence, BATA and Love Burger.
These establishments join The Delta, The Monica, Ezbachi, El Mezquite and Perche No in activating nearly 60 restaurants in downtown, which is rapidly becoming the food destination of Tucson.
This was further embellished when Chairman McCusker discussed Rio Nuevo’s role in helping to bring the Bravo Network’s “Top Chef” food show to Tucson for the season finale. Acknowledging Tucson’s status as an international City of Gastronomy, the series will visit the iconic El Charro, as well as Mission Garden and other area restaurants. Chairman McCusker said during the meeting “If you want to open a restaurant in downtown Tucson, come see us, we will help you.”
Finally, the Board approved the incentives for The Cadence converting from student housing to market rate apartments with ground floor food and beverage.
More information on this project and downtown can be found at RioNuevo.org
The creation of the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District was approved by Tucson voters in 1999, along with an appointed Board, to invest state tax dollars in public and public/private projects to create a vibrant Tucson core. For every dollar the Board invests, the community reaps $10 of construction activity with projects like the AC Marriott Hotel, the Arena, Greyhound, the Mercado Annex, City Park, the Marist project and Caterpillar. For more information, visit rionuevo.org.
