BY JOHN GALLAGHER
DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER


The Ann Arbor SPARK business incubator in Ypsilanti is the sort of entrepreneurial effort that Gov. Rick Snyder hopes to promote.There, start-up companies, often no more than one or two employees strong, occupy cubicles and share business services. Snyder served as SPARK's founding chairman, and recently named SPARK's former president, Mike Finney, to serve as president and CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Yet this entrepreneurial effort in Ypsilanti -- a model for promoting entrepreneurship -- might never have existed without the kind of incentives that Snyder is trying to zero out.

Developers Karen and Eric Maurer, who own the building where SPARK leases space, raised about 25% of the $2 million needed to renovate this formerly vacant late 1800s building using two types of credits. One was for rehabilitating historic structures and the other was for renovating brownfield buildings.

Without those credits, Karen Maurer said, the building would still be a vacant eyesore, as it was when they bought it in 2008. "I believe tax credits are important just because they help rehabilitate downtowns," she said.

But Finney contended the deal could still get done under the new system Snyder has proposed. Tax credits would go away under Snyder's plan, but the state would offer a $100-million pool of incentives to help worthwhile projects happen.
"We would still be able to do that deal using the incentives that the governor has been proposing," Finney said Monday.

Tax credits needed for revival?

As a real estate developer, Karen Maurer knows it might be easier to work in the suburbs than trying to rehabilitate century-old buildings in downtown Ypsilanti.

Continued at: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...=2011103080383