The presentation was the same, but the audience was different.

And much larger.

Judging from the size of the crowd at Tuesday's formal unveiling of the Red Line Regional Rail Project at the Charles Mack Citizen Center in Mooresville, a lot of government officials, community leaders, stakeholders and private citizens have been talking about the "restructured, reformed and recast" revival of the north corridor spoke of the 2025 Integrated Transit/Land Use Plan.

They came from Charlotte and Statesville — and all points in between — to hear and see in person what members of the Red Line Task Force, the Metropolitan Transit Commission, Charlotte Area Transit Service, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and the Lake Norman Transportation Commission, along with their consultants, have been discussing in great detail for the past 12-plus months.

A hybrid commuter and freight rail line is in the works where the century-old Norfolk & Southern Railroad "O" spur from downtown Charlotte to Mount Mourne (and farther in the future beyond I-40) would not only offer a travel alternative, but also serve as an economic catalyst the likes of which the region has never seen and serve as a hub of a growing emphasis on regional freight movement and storage in a shifting global logistics market.

If that sounds like a mouthful, that's because it is. And laying it all out to a roomful of engaged and intelligent people representing diverse points of view required a presentation of more than 130 frames, four hours and five speakers.

And to get to this point, said North Carolina Deputy Director of Transit Paul Morris, required a lot of out-of-the-box thinking to begin to accept new concepts in building and paying for infrastructure in the 21st century. The methodology, he and other speakers told the estimated crowd of 125-plus, is tried and proven in other parts of the country, but is new to North Carolina.

Call it regional self-reliance.

Jobs and money

In his opening remarks to the audience, many of whom at one time or another had heard him say it before, to get to this point, Morris said, "Participants had to step away from what is arguably and necessarily parochial concerns and to think outside the box in making decisions. ... It is a unique departure from the way you have done business in the past."

Following opening statements by Morris and Red Line Task Force chairman and Davidson Mayor John Woods, the presentation began in earnest when consultant Katherine Henderson hit the audience with the eye-popping statistics: the state and local investment in the Red Line Regional Rail Project would generate 23,000 jobs beyond what would normally be created without the rail and result in a minimum of $4.9 billion in economic development. Those figures, said Henderson and others in a subsequent question-and-answer session, are based only on known developments that are waiting for the Red Line.

Other studies of the Red Line have concluded that, at build-out, a total of $7 billion in high-density housing, retail, office, industrial and freight development will come to the 25-mile stretch of dual-use rail between the planned Gateway Station in Charlotte and the Phase I northern terminus in Mount Mourne near the Lowe's Home Improvement headquarters — all that in exchange for a total $452 million investment, of which the state and Charlotte Area Transit System would each pay $113 million, with an additional $226 million from the local municipalities spun off from additional tax revenues generated by new development along the corridor.

To make it happen, however, local leaders need to look at other parts of the country where regional rail projects were built with private investment repaid with future incremental tax revenue on properties whose owners benefit from the existence of the new infrastructure. It's a "pay-to-play" scenario that, proponents say, requires a coalition of local jurisdictions to unanimously participate in the creation of a limited-scope government to oversee the construction and implementation of the system.

A so-called joint powers authority (JPA) should consist of representatives appointed by the five municipalities, two counties, the Charlotte Area Transit System and the State of North Carolina, all of whom would be participants in the project. It would have no taxing authority, would hire a staff, collect revenues and direct them to repay the $226 million funded by industrial revenue bond holders, reserving a portion, at least 25 percent, for necessary local use.

To pay the freight, so to speak, Henderson assured the elected officials in the room that their municipalities would be under no obligation to repay the private investors, whom both she and Mark Briggs of transportation and land development consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff assured were ready and willing to buy in based on their own research into the project.

"The JPA agreement will explicitly protect all member jurisdictions from (financial) recourse," she said, a sentence that would be repeated several times during the day.

How?

The bondholders and underwriters, Morris and company explained, assume all the risk. The State of North Carolina, as it does with other borrowing for infrastructure improvements, will serve as the backstop. Any shortfall of repayment, which would only occur while the rail line is under construction, they said, would be covered by the state, later to be repaid from the "value capture," or revenues generated by the developed land along the corridor.

Paying for it

Nearly all of the presenters, either in their portion of the program or during the Q&A sessions, made certain to state that no property owners outside of what is called the Unified Benefits District (UBD) — the area along the tracks and bulges outward at the station areas and development sites along the corridor — would pay any additional taxes to support the rail. Repaying the private capital investment, ongoing operations and maintenance, and covering the gap between the fare box revenues and the real cost of operations will all come from money generated within the UBD.

The consultants, as well as at least some of those firms that might invest, recommend a combination of special assessment districts (SAD) and tax increment financing (TIF). To create the SAD, 50 percent of the property owners representing 75 percent of the land mass within the UBD would have to voluntarily join the SAD, per state statute, in order for it to be created. Once created, all parcels within the UBD would be subject to the special assessments, unless the JPA cited specific locations that may be exempt. These could include small pockets of low-income rentals. Single-family, owner-occupied residences would be exempt.

In order to provide for revenue during the early years of construction, those property owners would begin to pay the special assessment in 2013, the upfront cost necessary to reap the financial benefits the new infrastructure would later provide. Effectively, if they want the train to run through their property that they could later develop to a higher use because of the train, they would have to pay now. Many of those property owners and developers, Morris and company have said in the past, are ready to sign up. Among them are Phil Gandy of Gandy Communities, which would develop the area around the Eastfield Station in northern Charlotte, and Barry Rigby, whose company is developing Langtree at the Lake in southern Mooresville.

The cost to play was revealed for the first time Tuesday. The special assessment, in the beginning and probably for at least a decade, is recommended at 75 cents per $100 in property valuation. Although not technically a "tax" but rather "voluntary" assessment to help make the rail a reality, that assessment would add some 60 percent to the combined city/county property taxes in north Mecklenburg for those specific properties.

"We are going to have plenty of money for this project going forward, but how do we get it financed through the early portion?" asked Briggs rhetorically.

The bond holders, accustomed to infrastructure payback schedules, also know revenues will be lighter until the rail is up and running, which is when the tax increment financing kicks in. A TIF is the tax value generated by the improved value of property within the UBD, and two potential bond holders have told the consultants they anticipate $1 billion in excess money, above and beyond what is expected to repay the investment, to be generated from combined SAD and TIF revenues within the UBD over a 30-year period.

Briggs recommended that the JPA be tasked at some point in the future to revisit the 75/25 split in revenues, say a decade down the road, and adjusted accordingly. Or, they could also reduce the special assessment as a reward to those property owners who helped get the project started. All that, like other aspects of the JPA, is up to its member jurisdictions to decide.

"It's all about having local control of your own destiny," said Morris.

"At some point that percentage will go down," said Briggs of the 75/25 revenue split. "I can't imagine a scenario where the towns will allow that billion dollars to just sit there. Where is that tipping point when you will task the JPA to sit down and begin returning that excess back to the towns? That will be up to the members to decide."

Going forward

All along, officials have known Iredell County would be an obstacle in the unanimous agreement of all jurisdictions along the corridor that will be required to make any of this happen. Among those in the audience was Judge Robert Collier, the chairman of the North Carolina Board of Transportation. He lives in Statesville.

But bringing Iredell to the table may not be the only speed hump as an intense series of public meetings with local towns and citizens take place over the next 90 days. That's when they will get a true sense of how all the towns' elected officials and residents respond to the concept.

Until now, the work has been conducted by elected representatives, transportation professionals and consultants. By April 1, the Red Line Task Force hopes to use all the input from those meetings to provide an analyzed, debated, scrubbed and refined consensus plan ready for the second 90-day period of 2012, by the end of which it hopes to have secured unanimous approval by all seven jurisdictions, including Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Why the hurry? Unless there is an extension, on Jan. 1, 2013, the state legislation that permits the creation of special assessment districts will sunset.