“If this development were to go to a city that is not within the pool, University City gets nothing,” Rose said.

The $190 million redevelopment of the area at Olive Boulevard and Interstate 170 had been in the works for over a year. It was poised to receive final approval from the City Council in January when a concerned citizen, Gregory Pace, discovered that officials were counting on more revenue than would be generated.

As a result, University City officials and Novus hashed out a new development agreement that reduces payments for the city’s long-held priority of generating $15 million for Third Ward neighborhood improvements and Olive Boulevard upgrades. An advance payment to the city was cut to $3 million from $7.5 million and annual payments fall to about $200,000 from $500,000. New taxes generated in the Third Ward will also be contributed to that $15 million total, whereas the new development was initially projected to fund all of that.

Novus’s $70.5 million subsidy under the tax increment financing district — which lets developers use property and some sales taxes to finance construction — was unchanged.