The Next Case: Served Up Hot

While we have been sitting through City Council meetings twice a month for the last fifteen months, usually with more empty chairs than people and fewer livestream views than a cat video, the real story has been hiding in plain sight. You will not hear it in the excitement after another “economic development” announcement, but it is buried in the paperwork. And that paperwork tells a story City Hall does not want you to read.

At the September 16, 2024 meeting, Athens approved not one but two major incentive deals. One for PBHG Athens Properties LLC, the developer behind the new Five Guys and Nothing Bundt Cakes, and another for JHR Athens Property and Gunnabel Athens LLC, the team bringing in Texas Roadhouse and 7 Brew Coffee. Both are being promoted as “economic development.” Both are being paid for by the public.

Let us start with the PBHG Athens Properties project on Kelli Drive. According to the City’s official notice, the project is expected to create approximately 45 new jobs, include $7.5 million in total capital investment, and generate about $2 million in annual taxable sales. In exchange, the City approved what it calls a Total City Sales Tax Commitment of One Hundred Eighty Thousand and 00/100 Dollars ($180,000.00). The City will rebate 100 percent of the sales tax it collects from Five Guys and Nothing Bundt Cakes each year, paid in arrears, until the total of $180,000 is reached or the five-year term expires, whichever comes first.

Then comes the Texas Roadhouse and 7 Brew Coffee project, located on nearly nine acres of the old Haney Equipment property. For this one, the City entered into a similar arrangement but at a much larger scale. The ordinance defines the Total City Sales Tax Commitment as Nine Hundred Thousand and 00/100 Dollars ($900,000.00), paid over a period of eight years or until that full amount is reached. Like the other deal, payments will be made in arrears from the sales tax actually collected at those two locations.

Here is where it gets interesting. Those checks will not be written to Texas Roadhouse or 7 Brew Coffee. They will not go to Five Guys or Nothing Bundt Cakes. They go to the developers, the LLCs listed on the agreements.  Not the businesses actually bringing in the customers or hiring the staff. The city is not rewarding the companies running the restaurants. It is reimbursing the property owners who built them.

So when Athens proudly announces these deals as “partnerships with new businesses,” that is not the full story. The restaurants are tenants. The developers are the ones cashing the city’s rebate checks. The public sees new jobs and new dining options, but behind the paperwork, it is the landholders who get paid.

In both cases, the City also agreed to fund infrastructure improvements such as roadwork, turn lanes, and water and sewer access. So, before a single steak is grilled, cup of coffee poured, a cake baked, or hamburger grilled, the City has already spent taxpayer dollars to make the projects possible.

We understand the saying that you have to spend money to make money. But in Athens, it is starting to look like we are spending our money so someone else can make theirs. Developers get reimbursed, businesses get rebates they never see, and the City hopes that one day it will all pay off. Hope is not a strategy, but lately, it seems to be the plan.

City leaders often say these projects will create jobs and boost school funding through sales tax. The problem is those benefits are years away, while the checks to developers start almost immediately. It is like buying dinner for a table of strangers and being told your dessert will show up in eight years, if they even remember.

Local business owners do not get these kinds of deals. They pay full price, handle their own improvements, and keep their doors open through grit and community support, not rebates. Yet they are the backbone of Athens. They sponsor ball teams, donate to fundraisers, and show up for the city, even when the city does not show up for them.

Ironically, that same September agenda also included Eggs Up Grill, a new breakfast spot that had to go before the council for zoning approval to serve alcohol. The business went through the standard public-hearing process, checked every box, and moved forward without a single incentive, rebate, or tax break. No fanfare, no “project agreement,” no city-funded infrastructure.

So what does that say? Why did Eggs Up Grill get nothing while developers behind national chains are handed rebate warrants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Why is Olive Garden now publicly requesting incentives of its own, instead of the developer footing that bill like in every other case? Is it a new precedent, or just the latest example of who City Hall decides to help?

We do not make the news. We just read the fine print. And the fine print keeps asking the same question: Are we supporting businesses, or just paying our buddies behind the LLCs?

Here is a thought, maybe the next time City Hall wants to “support businesses,” they should try starting with the ones that actually live here. The ones with a 256 area code, a storefront on Jefferson Street, and kids in the local schools. You know, the ones who show up for Athens even when Athens forgets to show up for them.

Shop local. Eat local. Maybe even find yourself a local LLC while you are at it, one that is not just a mailing address tied to a PO box and a buddy at the courthouse. Because around here, we have plenty of folks investing sweat, not subsidies. And they deserve more than leftover crumbs from City Hall’s incentive table.

And stick around, because next, we are digging into who is really behind those LLCs. Something tells me the names will not surprise you.

Editor’s Note:
This article is an opinion piece based on publicly available information, city documents, and official records. In other words, we don’t make the news — we just read the fine print.