Creative Industry Community Revitalization Incentives

The act provides additional flexibility to the Colorado educational and cultural facilities authority in supporting educational and cultural facilities by authorizing the authority:

• To use money it has available for its general purposes to establish funds for loans or grants for capital projects for facilities, operations, maintenance, programming, and other endeavors for cultural and educational institutions; and
• To directly, or indirectly through a contract or a subsidiary controlled entity created by the authority, operate an educational or cultural facility.

In addition, the definition of "facility", in the case of a cultural institution, is expanded to include a building on the national register of historic places that is owned or operated by the authority or a governmental entity.

The act modifies the community revitalization grant program (grant program) by:

• Including projects that are eligible for funding under the space to create program administered by the creative industries division (division) within the office of economic development (office) as projects intended to be supported by the grant program;
• Extending deadlines for the adoption of policies, procedures, and guidelines for the grant program and for grant program reporting; and
• Extending the scheduled repeal of the grant program from January 1, 2025, to the date on which all money transferred or otherwise credited to the community revitalization fund is expended.

The act creates a new community revitalization income tax credit (credit), for income tax years commencing on or after January 1, 2026, but before January 1, 2033, in an amount equal to 25% of the amount of eligible expenditures made by a qualified applicant in completing an eligible project; except that the office may reduce the credit percentage for reservations for credits made in any income tax year, and the maximum amount of the credit for a single project is $3 million. In addition, the maximum amount of credits that may be reserved during any calendar year is $10 million. An eligible project is a capital improvement project within a creative district, a historic district, or a neighborhood commercial center or a main street that involves the construction, rehabilitation, conversion, remodeling, or other improvement of one or more buildings, structures, or facilities for uses that support creative industries and creative industry workers and that is approved as an eligible project by the office.

The act details a process for claiming the credit that requires:

• The submission by a qualified applicant to the office of an eligible project plan that includes an estimate of eligible expenditures;
• Preliminary and final review and approval of the plan by the office;
• Reservation of a credit for the qualified applicant by the office;
• Commencement of the eligible project incurrence by the qualified applicant of a specified minimum portion of the eligible expenditures within a specified period;
• Completion of the eligible project;
• Issuance of a tax credit certificate by the office;
• Filing of the tax credit certificate by the qualified applicant with the department of revenue with the qualified applicant's tax return or informational return; and
• Recapture of the credit if the eligible project is not used for a use that makes it an eligible project during a specified compliance period.

The office is required to annually report to the general assembly regarding the credit and may, after soliciting advice from the department of revenue, create and modify policies and procedures as necessary to implement the credit. The community revitalization tax credit program cash fund is created, funded with tax credit application and issuance fees charged by the office as well as any other money provided by the general assembly and any gifts, grants, and donations received, and continuously appropriated to the office for the administration of the credit.

For the 2024-25 state fiscal year, the act appropriates $102,498 from the general fund to the office of the governor for economic development programs.

APPROVED by Governor May 28, 2024

EFFECTIVE May 28, 2024
(Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)