An Academy Sports and Outdoors store.

The Cullman City Council is set to vote on a proposal to pay Academy Sports + Outdoors up to $800,000 for the Texas-based retailer to build an $8 million, 63,000-square-foot store off Lee Avenue Southwest.

If approved by the City Council at its March 27 meeting, it will be the second time the city has offered incentives for retail development.

The proposal for the Academy store is outlined in a public notice published in Sunday’s Times.

Under the proposed deal, Academy will buy an 8.06-acre tract — valued at $1,122,900 based on Cullman County property tax records — located behind Aldi and invest $8 million to develop the site and build a store.

The project is estimated to create 100 new jobs and generate $12 million in annual sales.

The city would reap a projected $270,000 in new annual sales tax revenue, plus more tax revenue from the construction materials, business license and ad valorem. Meanwhile, local schools would receive additional sales tax money from Academy’s sales.

In exchange, Cullman would remit back to Academy $800,000 of its sales tax, paid in seven annual installments up to $110,000 and $30,000 on the eighth year, or half of the sales tax revenue, said Mayor Woody Jacobs.

“This is all new revenue,” he said. “It’s not us going into our budget and giving them money.”

The city would also provide “certain public infrastructure improvements” related to the project. It’s not clear what improvements those would be or the cost.

While tax incentives are common place with industrial recruitment and expansion, the Academy proposal marks just the second time Cullman has offered a retail development financial aid to set up shop.

In 2013, the city entered into tax-sharing agreement worth up to $6 million with Cullman Shopping Center’s owner Merchants Retail Partners (MRP) as a part of the development’s massive renovation and expansion which yielded Publix, Dick’s Sporting Goods, ULTA, Ross Dress for Less, Panera Bread, Moe’s Southwest Grill and PetSmart.

Only a new restaurant remains the lone unaccomplished goal in the revitalization plan.

In addition to that incentive deal, the city invested $1.8 million in infrastructure upgrades for the project.

Under the agreement with MRP, businesses at the shopping center still pay sales tax, but the city pays back some of those funds for 10 years. The deal only applies to city sales tax (1.75 percent) and does not include education taxes.

City officials say the incentives will have a multitude of public benefits: promoting local economic development and stimulating the local economy, increasing employment opportunities in the city, increasing its tax base and eliminating blight through the productive re-use of vacant and under-utilized property.

If Academy Sports + Outdoors opens in Cullman, it will join Dick’s, Hibbett Sports and locally-owned Wilborn Outdoor in Cullman and Van’s Sporting Goods near Good Hope.