When you plot out where new things in Baltimore have been built since the turn of the century, you’ll find them to be scattershot. A shopping center on the North Side. A housing community in Northeast. And, of course, a new, ritzy mini-city in what used to be known as Port Covington.

They may have little in common on the surface, but they all share an origin story: They were made possible by developer-friendly, city-backed financing deals. Whether it’s a high-profile development project such as Harbor Point or a relative flop like Poppleton, Baltimore’s politicians gave out what are essentially tax breaks to make them happen.

Known as tax increment financing, or TIF, it’s an arrangement where the city will take out municipal bonds to pay for infrastructure costs which are in turn repaid over a number of years through future property taxes at the site. In theory, TIFs are mutually beneficial. They allow developers to avoid high interest rates on construction loans for building roads or water and sewer lines for their projects. In turn, cash-strapped cities like Baltimore can entice companies to build new things where demand might otherwise not exist.

But questions have long loomed over the efficacy of these deals and whether they have gone on to further stratify an already unequal city. Are they even working?

A November report, the second such review, offers some insight. Here are some takeaways:

1. TIFs are (mostly) making money, raising property values

The report shows that the 10 active TIFs generated a net fiscal impact of $11 million during the fiscal year that ended this past June and delivered nearly $3 million to Baltimore’s general fund.

Meanwhile, the assessed property values across these 10 sites also has risen, from around $150 million when the TIFs were enacted to more than $1 billion now.

Those numbers are expected to grow, said Keenan Rice, President at MuniCap, Inc., which prepared the report. Many of the bonds are close to being paid off, he said, and others are locked into tax credit deals that have deferred driving more revenue but will soon expire.

Though $2.7 million in added city revenue may not sound like much, some said there are reasons to be hopeful about the direction these projects are heading.

“We don’t have many more years that we’re dealing with a lot of the bonds, and after that time, the city really gets the real benefit,” said Arnold Williams, founding member and managing director of Abrams, Foster, Nole & Williams public accounting firm. Williams, who spoke at a November Board of Finance meeting, is one of five members who sits on the board.

About $360 million of outstanding bond revenues remain unpaid, which is what is limiting more money for the general fund. Some finance board members questioned whether the same impacts could be felt with smaller bond amounts.

2. More, better transparency needed

Many local governments use TIFs as a means to spur development, but not all of them do a good job of tracking the expenditures or their impacts. This report is just the second published by MuniCap about Baltimore’s TIFs, despite urging from elected officials like Comptroller Bill Henry and City Council member Odette Ramos to monitor their progress and be transparent about their performance.

“The city doesn’t make it easy for people to understand what we’ve done with money,” said Henry, who said while he generally supports using TIFs as a means to spark development where it otherwise wouldn’t happen, he doesn’t believe they have enough oversight in Baltimore.

For example, though the City Council is required to approve TIF packages before they get spent, Henry said it’s a tactical blow for the oversight to wane after that point. If a project doesn’t match the intent or original renderings that led to its approval, Henry said the public ought to know what happened and why.

“That’s not the best way to run a railroad, to have no continued action with the project, with either the community itself or its elected representatives,” he said.

A lack of transparency can make it hard to evaluate the success of a TIF, which is in itself difficult enough, said David Merriman, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

“It’s kind of shocking that they’ve gotten away for, you know, two decades or something without issuing reports,” Merriman said of Baltimore. “There’s a lot of money in them, so you should know what’s happening.”

Existing research around TIFs suggest most do not accomplish their stated goals of economic development, Merriman wrote in a paper for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where he is a distinguished scholar. They also can have unintended side effects such as causing budget volatility during economic downturns.

That’s why Henry and others on the city’s finance board asked that future reports include a column showing past projections as a way to better gauge a project’s performance. That additional data point is expected to be included in next year’s report.

3. The underperformers

Two of the city’s TIF districts, Poppleton in West Baltimore and Strathdale Manor in Northeast Baltimore’s Frankford neighborhood, are costing the city more than they generate in property tax revenue. But that may be beside the point, according to the report and to city officials.

Strathdale is an affordable housing development in an area where new homes had not been built in decades. The units were modestly priced and were never expected to generate significant revenue for the city’s coffers.

Meanwhile, Poppleton is a bit of a different story. Meant to “revitalize” a struggling neighborhood, the project developer has failed to deliver on several promises and the city was, as of this summer, examining whether it could cancel the future development contract.

A Baltimore Banner investigation revealed that the developer selected for the project in the mid-2000s was actually the worst-rated developer of the three who submitted bids. But the company’s leaders had ties to then-City Council President Sheila Dixon.

Still, if the lone apartment complex built at the Poppleton site reaches full occupancy, the city projects the tax revenues will produce a “positive net fiscal impact” in 2027.

4. Harbor Point and Port Covington are doing well. Did they need a TIF?

Already, the ongoing developments in Harbor Point and Port Covington neighborhoods are making money, though they have to continue to pay off their debts before they can contribute to the city’s general fund.

They, so far, are the most lucrative of the districts, with net fiscal impacts of more than $4 million and $3.9 million, respectively.

Harbor Point, a former brownfield site that carried significant contamination risks, may not have been developed without the added financial incentive. It has since gone on to provide more waterfront access, office space for prominent employers, hotels and housing.

What’s now known as Baltimore Peninsula, meanwhile, had been used primarily as industrial land. Bought by a group of investors headed by Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, the site has been built up over the last decade to include shops, dining, apartments and a new campus for the apparel company.

While these sites may have otherwise laid dormant, they have drawn community criticism. Baltimore Peninsula and Harbor Point are luxury developments with very rich backers — this is Plank’s second Baltimore TIF (Under Armour’s Locust Point campus is also the product of a tax deal). Critics of the TIF argued that they weren’t as in need of revitalization as some existing and more populous neighborhoods that had undergone years of neglect and blight.

Experts like Merriman said it’s important for civic leaders to question whether these developer-friendly deals are needed in cases like these.

“If it would’ve happened anyways,” Merriman said, “then we shouldn’t have had the TIF to start with.”

Baltimore Banner reporter Emily Opilo contributed to this story.