Dec. 10—JAMESTOWN — The Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp. Board of Directors unanimously approved on Monday, Dec. 9, funding the 2025 Flex PACE Program in the amount of $500,000.
If approved by the Jamestown City Council and the Stutsman County Commission, the 2025 Flex PACE Program will be funded on an 80-20 city-county split. The city of Jamestown’s share would be $400,000 while Stutsman County’s share would be $100,000.
The Flex PACE Program is an interest buydown program through the Bank of North Dakota that requires a community match portion, according to JSDC’s document for grading Flex PACE applications. The interest rate buydown can be between 5% and as low as 1%. The Jamestown-Stutsman County community match portion is 30% of the total interest buydown with a maximum amount of $85,714. The community portion of the interest buydown is a loan from JSDC that is collected after the terms of the note at 2% over four years.
In 2024, the JSDC participated in 12 Flex PACE loans totaling over $640,000, said Alyssa Looysen, business director for JSDC. She said the investment leveraged about $1.5 million and more than $14 million in private investment into the Jamestown area.
Corry Shevlin, CEO of JSDC, said three projects — 201 Aesthetics, Charge on Together and Central Sales — are listed as participating in Flex PACE loans in 2024.
“We kept those … in as full cash values one because they will still receive incentives and they still do get incentives from the Bank of North Dakota, but from our book side, we didn’t feel comfortable taking that off just yet until everything was fully done and executing,” he said.
The Jamestown City Council approved a five-year payment in lieu of taxes for the development of a commercial building for Central Sales Inc., and 201 Aesthetics and Charge on Together Center are Renaissance Zone projects, The Jamestown Sun previously reported.
An update to the Flex PACE application includes applicants needing to occupy at least 51% of the real estate to qualify and the funding being prorated for space occupied by the operating business.
“That’s one of the questions in the last couple of requests that we’ve had so we did add that in,” Looysen said.