In 2002, the City of Champaign, Illinois created a Special Service Area (SSA) for Campustown, the commercial district adjacent to the University of Illinois campus. The SSA was established to fund streetscape improvements in the Campustown area, such as street furniture, non-standard streetlights, colored concrete sidewalks and trees.
The Campustown SSA had two taxation components:
a fixed amount per dollar of the building’s equalized assessed value (EAV)
a per-linear-foot charge for the portion of each building facing the public right-of-way (City Council of Champaign, 2002).
The City determined that the total cost of streetscape improvements would be approximately $6 million and the SSA was enacted to recoup these expenses over 10 years. Ultimately, equalized assessed values rose faster than anticipated and the City terminated the SSA two years early in 2010 (Rost, 2012).