More Cigarette Tax For Reilly

The Morning Call reports that T&B Tobacco, a fixture on Linden Street forever,  has sold out to J.B. Reilly's NIZ empire.  While the Call article spelled out some of the NIZ financial benefits,  it didn't reveal all the trade secrets.

The newspaper has never been overly frank about Reilly's NIZ.*  Their building at 6th & Linden was included in the NIZ zone,  even when originally the zone was limited to only the other side of Linden Street. Reilly now owns the Morning Call building, with the paper's presence there limited to distribution only. However, since that first map,  everything about the NIZ is subject to flexibility.  The NIZ status of parcels within the zone can be traded for parcels outside the zone. 

Even the addition of the cigarette state tax was a profitable afterthought. While Reilly and the NIZ can now use the Pennsylvania cigarette tax for their real estate debt service, prior to the NIZ,  that tax went to CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program.

While this blog has published many posts about the NIZ and the paper's promotion of it*,  recently I have refrained from pointing out the obvious.  However, a quote from the seller of the tobacco outfit is too much to ignore.  He states about the NIZ, “It sure beats the hell out of how things were 20 years ago,"   It certainly does for him. In addition to the undisclosed $millions he received for his business, Reilly also gave him $2.5 million for his old tired building. 

* The current reporter is much more forthright about the NIZ than his predecessors, who wrote outright  promotions for Reilly's City Center Realty.