The question of taxing the development of downtown Denver will be put before some of the city’s voters in 2024

An estimated 2,500 Denver residents and eligible businesses will be able to vote on an additional ballot question in November that is not available to their neighbors.

The City Council voted Monday to put the future of the Denver Downtown Development Authority — and with it more than half a billion dollars worth of potential funding for infrastructure and other downtown projects — in the hands of these qualified electors.

Mayor Mike Johnston announced his ambitions to greatly expand the little-known taxing agency at a press conference outside Union Station in May, describing the tsunami of new public investment the expansion could bring as a means of breaking the “vicious cycle” of declining business activity and rising crime downtown that emerged at the start of the COVID pandemic.

According to real estate company JLL, there is a record level of vacant office space in the city center.

The authority, abbreviated to DDDA, derives its revenue from collecting a portion of sales and property taxes from participating property owners within its boundaries. It uses that money to fund approved development identified “with the goal of stimulating economic growth and curbing deteriorating conditions,” Dawnna Wilder, project manager in the city’s Department of Finance, told council members at a committee hearing earlier this month.

The district was created in 2008 to pay off about $400 million in public debt that had been taken on to finance infrastructure around the station when it underwent a major overhaul.

The ballot question that council members put before voters Monday would authorize the city to take on up to $570 million in new debt on behalf of the DDDA to fund both public facilities and projects and potentially improvements to private property. The measure would set a repayment cap of $847 million on that debt, taking into account a 5 percent interest rate and other costs, Wilder said at the committee hearing earlier this month.

The debt would not be on the city’s books. It would belong to the DDDA. The authority has the authority to collect shares of the tax revenue until 2038. Approval of the measure would not increase taxes on the properties involved, city officials emphasized.

Only property owners, residents and renters within the district’s existing boundaries will vote on the question in November. Those boundaries include Union Station and several immediately adjacent blocks, as well as the block that formerly housed the Regional Transportation District’s Market Street Station, city maps show. The city clerk and recorder’s office will handle outreach to eligible voters.