Former City Commissioner Bob Schumm has filed plans to build a five-story building on a pair of vacant lots in the 800 block of Vermont Street.

The Lawrence City Commission refused to consider Tuesday an 85 percent tax abatement for a former commissioner’s proposed downtown development.

When a majority of commissioners told Bob Schumm they would contemplate only a 50 percent rebate for his condominium, office and commercial project, he told them that the development, as is, would not move forward.

“You’ve eliminated what I thought was a pretty nice project for the long-term survivability of downtown,” Schumm said after the commission had made its decision. “It’s befuddling to me we’re at this point right now.”

Schumm submitted a request for a tax abatement through the Neighborhood Revitalization Act for 85 percent for five years, followed by 50 percent for another five years. His request also included $7.7 million in industrial revenue bonds, which would exempt him from paying sales tax on construction materials.

The proposed $8.8 million project, called Vermont Place, would be located at a vacant lot at 815 Vermont St., and would include 11 condominiums, one of which Schumm would occupy. Project plans, which Schumm has been working on for over a year, recently received approval from the Historic Resources Commission.

Commissioners were asked Tuesday whether they wanted to start the months-long process of analyzing the request for tax breaks. Because the city is currently undergoing a change to its rules that govern financial incentives — an effort initiated by the City Commission — Lawrence Economic Development Director Britt Crum-Cano asked whether those new proposals should apply to Schumm’s project, though they haven’t yet been established as policy.

Mayor Mike Amyx wanted to send Schumm’s request through the public process. That would include an analysis by city staff and a review by the Public Incentives Review Committee before the City Commission took a final vote on it.

“I believe any project that comes before us deserves its day,” Amyx said. “This applicant has applied under the current rules that we have. I personally believe we should entertain that.”

But Amyx was alone in that thinking.

Commissioners Matthew Herbert, Lisa Larsen, Stuart Boley and Vice Mayor Leslie Soden said they would not consider as high of a tax abatement as Schumm was seeking.

The city’s economic development incentives policy currently states a 50 percent tax abatement is “typical,” but the City Commission can modify the percentage.

In recent years, the City Commission has approved 85 and 95 percent property tax abatements for projects.

When commissioners suggested incentives policy changes in January, Herbert suggested 50 percent be a “firm ceiling” and 85 or 95 percent rebates “should never come to the table.”

“Our proposal is honoring the language of the NRA, which has fallen off track for about a decade, as it’s exceeded that time and time again,” Herbert said Tuesday.

Schumm had come prepared with information about what his return on the project would be if commissioners allowed only a 50 percent rebate.

“It doesn’t make sense; it won’t work out,” Schumm said. “There’s too much downside to it. It would crash and burn.”

Schumm, who was a commissioner for 12 years — most recently from 2011 to 2015 — said commissions in the past have “always been flexible.”

“Through the years we’ve seen lots of exceptions to the rules,” he said.

He referred to a project at 1106 Rhode Island St. led by Lawrence architect Stan Hernly, which received an 85 percent tax rebate.

“The meetings he went through, he didn’t get one questionable, negative vote,” Schumm said.

Commissioners voted 3-2 to direct city staff to work with Schumm to see if there’s a project he could propose that would be feasible with a maximum 50 percent tax rebate. Herbert and Soden voted against it.

Schumm had requested the tax breaks to offset the cost of underground parking, which was quoted at $1.1 million for 22 spaces, he said in his application. The incentives would also help with vacancies in the development’s commercial and office spaces Schumm said he was expecting in its first couple of years.

The project could move forward with a 50 percent tax rebate, Schumm said, if he eliminated the underground parking and switched the condominiums to apartments.

“If I come back and say, ‘OK, I’ve eliminated the parking, and I can make it work at 50 percent,’ will that be sufficient? Is that what you want me to do?” Schumm said. “I’ll be happy to work with staff, but I don’t know what you want other than an apartment building.”

Besides thinking it was too high of a request, Larsen and Soden also said the project lacked a “public good.”

“For something to receive public incentives, for me it needs to show a very clear public good, which, in my opinion, is (primarily) jobs or affordable housing,” Soden said. “A lot of people are unhappy that past commissions have been lax on giving public assistance. Part of why we were elected is to rein that back.”

Under a proposed mandate to require affordable units in residential developments receiving subsidies, Vermont Place would have to set aside one unit to a low-income household. Schumm said that would be complex with a condominium, which would include homeowners’ association fees, but he would be willing to buy a duplex in Lawrence and offer one of those units as affordable.

Soden and City Manager Tom Markus said they would like to see an affordable unit within the project.

Besides his offer to provide an affordable unit outside the development, the project did include public benefit, Schumm said. It’s infill development in an “underutilized” space,” he said, and it would be LEED certified, add to the “vitality” of downtown and include parking, which downtown developments are not required to do.

“When I heard you go through the Pachamamas Project upset about the project not having parking, I thought, ‘Aha,’ I got parking in mine, and that’s what they’re looking for,'” Schumm said. “It’s trying to read the waves.”