The city assessed the spot in a bustling retail hub right off Highway 41 at $13.6 million. The company’s appraisal was $7.1 million, based on sales of empty and once empty buildings in other neighborhoods. But the city’s assessor said Lowe’s had partly based its analysis on stores that were more than 25 years old and in economically declining neighborhoods. Another store was listed as comparable in part because of its “proximity” to a shopping mall, although instead of the booming center near this Lowe’s, that mall had closed 15 years earlier. City officials estimate that the current string of dark-store lawsuits alone would require it to refund $4.1 million of tax payments — the equivalent of about a tenth of its total property tax revenue this year.

Source: New York Times January 06, 2019 07:52 UTC