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Mayors' Forum: Turning Communities AroundAugust 29, 2001Upstate urban communities along the spine of the New York State Thruway are like the proverbial frog in boiling water: "A frog dumped in boiling water will instantly jump out. But put the frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat to boiling, and the frog will first enjoy the warmth, and then, lulled into a stupor, will die," said William A. Johnson, Jr., mayor of Rochester, at the 12th ULI/Joseph C. Canizano Mayors' Forum held in that city last July."The water is slowly coming to a boil," he continued. "These cities [Rochester, Cortland, Albany, Niagara Falls, Elmira, Corning, Schenectady, Utica, Buffalo, Rome, and Ithaca] are mere shadows of their former selves. The quality of their metropolitan areas is declining. For example, in the years 1970 to 1990, Rochester became the tenth-fastest declining American city in terms of population, losing over 100,000 residents. Tax bases have declined, the tax burden and social strain on those left behind have grown, and the pressures to disinvest are mounting. High taxes, poorly performing schools, falling property values, a declining customer base with diminishing purchasing power, and the disappearance of well-paying manufacturing jobs have made western New York one of the most depressed regions of the country. Kodak employs 30,000 people in greater Rochester--26,000 fewer than just 15 years ago. State budgetary policy has cut in half the state's revenue-sharing aid to local governments since 1989. In 1992, local government taxes per capita were $1,870--the highest in the nation and more than twice the national average of $890." This bleak picture served as the backdrop for the mayors' forum that brought together a dozen or so representatives of 11 upstate New York cities in a roundtable discussion with ULI members and other guests to discuss the topic "Community Retail and Neighborhood Revitalization." So what is a mayor of one of these depressed cities to do? In addition to efforts by mayors to form regional partnerships and change state policies toward municipal government, two initiatives provide part of the answer: promote commercial revitalization in the downtown and the neighborhoods, and involve neighbors in creative efforts to rebuild neighborhoods. Revitalizing Main Street In her keynote address, Kennedy Lawson Smith, director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street Program, suggested four broad areas that need to be considered if urban retail is going to be revitalized, as it has been in many communities where the Main Street Program has been instituted:
Retail Follows People Responding to Smith's remarks, Bruce Tytler, mayor of Cortland, described his city's major fall festival and efforts to attract people to downtown; a sidewalk sales day sponsored by the local downtown business association; and efforts to attract college students. Noting that Cortland is home to State University of New York (SUNY)-Cortland, he said, "I keep trying to explain to the downtown merchants: the more you entice these college students, the more successful you'll probably be. Young people think downtowns are cool, and they don't want to go to malls." Hal Miksch, chairman of First Avenue LLC, based in Columbus, Ohio, told the group that the first thing his son, who was raised in the suburbs, did when he graduated from college was to move into an urban neighborhood. His generation, he noted, is "very socially conscious. They believe they can make a difference at the local level and they are moving into these urban environments en masse." A similar point was made by Gerald D. Jennings, mayor of Albany: "If you bring 4,000 to 5,000 people into a downtown area, retail is going to flourish. And in Albany, we've been able to do that," noting the new construction, new workers, and the numbers of people speculating on buildings. "We have three major business improvement districts, bringing thousands of new workers into the core fabric, and it has helped the retail. Retail does follow people." Niagara Falls, faced with a tremendous drain of people and capital across the border into Canada where a gambling casino awaits, has not partnered with state government as successfully as has Albany. Niagara has gone even to China "to meet potential investors, who right now are in the process of buying several properties in the heart of the main street area," said Nancy J. Joseph, the city's deputy director of economic development and planning. "Hopefully, this will help turn things around." In Elmira, according to Samuel Iraci, the city manager, a $20 million sports entertainment center is being finalized and an $8 million performing arts center has been completed "to help restore downtown to its traditional role as a place where people get together to enjoy themselves and be around other people." Iraci also described a local restaurant--Lib's--in an old warehouse "almost underneath the viaduct. If you were a site selection agent for a national retail food chain, this is the last place you'd pick for a restaurant," he said. "But you can't get in that place because it has something people want. The outside amenities--parking, security, lighting, and so forth--are not nearly as important as what's inside: a great Italian eatery, with fantastic food and big portions . . . a roaring success," Iraci added. Donovan D. Rypkema, principal of the Real Estate Services Group based in Washington, D.C., maintained that while law firms, banks, and offices downtown are all well and good, "There are only four things that put people on the street: retailing, food and beverage, entertainment, and housing." He went on to assert that "the health of a downtown can be measured 25 ways. But if there were only one, it would be this: Are there people on the street? If the answer is 'Yes,' it's successful; if the answer is 'No,' it isn't." Targeting Urban Markets Miksch spoke of the "huge market" that has been left behind by the suburbanization of retail activity, illustrating his thesis with a story about Home Depot "dragged kicking and screaming" to an urban neighborhood in south Chicago. The company wanted to establish a couple of sites in Chicago and was told by city officials there: "Fine, you can have those, but first you have got to take this one." They agreed, and a year and a half after it opened, the south Chicago store had exceeded the market research projections (which boasted of being 80 percent accurate) "by 300 percent." Noted Miksch: "These urban markets are little understood, and their market potential is typically underestimated. They are complex projects. They take more work than greenfield developments. But there's more upside potential if you're one of the early ones in." Rypkema pointed out that "there are market opportunities on the neighborhood level, even on the bottom rung of the economic ladder." He explained that a household with an income of less than $5,000 a year ("the lowest category of household incomes on which records are kept") actually has an annual spending capacity of $11,000, once transfer payments, gifts, savings, and credit expenditures are taken into account. Rypkema talked about "targeted marketing opportunities" that would serve, for example, the one-person households that constitute 35 percent of all American households: "That 35 percent is spread chronologically, racially, and educationally across the spectrum. It is a great target market, be it in downtown or in a neighborhood." Tom DeSantis, senior planner for Niagara Falls, commented, "We have to attract people back to the core of the city." This prompted Dana H. Crawford, president of Denver-based Urban Neighborhoods, Inc., to talk about downtown Denver and "the staggering number of people who are looking for a new lifestyle and for community." And not just in the large cities. She cited Evanston, Wyoming, "which is just about as small as you can get, and yet there is a very strong preservation ethic and people are flocking to the little downtown there." Speaking only half jokingly, Rypkema talked about his "1 to 3 percent crazy person rule." "Anywhere in the country, somewhere between 1 and 3 percent of the population lives right downtown, in upper floors, if quality housing is available. They're not the 'sane' 97 percent of the population wanting a garden apartment, two bedrooms, a bath and a half, and a garage." He noted that 1 percent can make "a huge difference, whether you're talking about 12,000 people in Corning or 300,000 in Rochester." Steve Adams, director of research and strategy at the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City in Boston, Massachusetts, agreed. His organization has studied urban markets, discerned their competitive advantage, and now is trying "to convince people that they can make a profit by bringing their product lines into underserved neighborhoods." He spoke of "the enormous amount of buying power" in these locations, and pointed out that if "the folks who live there" can be included in the planning process so that the market, with its challenges and barriers, is understood clearly, profitable retail opportunities will be created. "The residents are the asset. Successful retailers will serve diverse markets and really tailor their approaches to different interests and needs." Mayor Albert Jurczynski of Schenectady put a different spin on the issue. "The thing that amazes me is that people in the inner cities have to eat, yet they are forced to take cabs to other areas to shop for food. And then you have residents in those areas complaining about people coming in from the inner city and ruining the neighborhood," he said. "So we're trying to get a supermarket in the inner city." Jurczynski said that all mayors want a grocery store in the heart of the city or its urban neighborhoods. Rochester has one. Johnson took the group on a bus tour of some neighborhoods in Rochester. One stop was at Upper Falls Shopping Center, which had been "a vacant eyesore for almost ten years" in the low- and moderate-income area where it is located." The city constructed a $11.3 million, full-service retail plaza surrounded on three sides by large, multitenant housing projects after having negotiated a deal with Tops Supermarkets to build five stores within the city, including one of 23,000 square feet--with a promise to locate a police precinct station next door. The remaining space in the shopping center has been 100 percent leased to multiple tenants, he noted, "all providing important services to neighborhood residents." Joseph B. Zehnder, then-director of urban development at ULI, addressed the difficulty of arranging the financing for urban retail. Independent grocers and other locally owned stores, as opposed to larger national chains, are viable neighborhood anchors, he said. "They understand better the diversity and tastes of the local market and how to merchandise to that market. But projects based on independent businesses rather than chains are more difficult to finance, since lenders see such tenants as a greater risk. "This," he said, "has been overcome in some cases through rent writedowns by the developer or guarantees on a lease by a wholesaler." Tapping Grass-Roots Potential Michael Banner, president and CEO of Los Angeles LDC, a nonprofit community development financial institution that has worked closely with independent grocery stores in the Los Angeles area, added that hiring "from the community" also makes a lot of sense. He said that "the notion of equity and community involvement helps you in turning a neighborhood around [because] you know the guy who owns the supermarket." In a similar vein, Johnny J. Mack, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based National Institute for Community Empowerment, commented that "latent power" exists within the community. "Citizens are the starting point of the whole process. Educate and inform them so they can give substantive input and then see substantive results." He talked about "a comprehensive approach to revitalization" that includes the community as a partner along with the public and private sectors. And he emphasized the need for a balance between "place-based and people-placed development." This idea was emphasized twice during the participants' stay in Rochester. Johnson conducted a tour of a few of Rochester's downtown neighborhoods: the Frederick Douglass Village, a new community built on a 5.2-acre vacant tract of land just a few minutes from the city's central business district; the Susan B. Anthony District, a historically and architecturally significant neighborhood that retains its original public square and alley configuration, commercial strip, and industrial area, as well as the majority of its old residential buildings, including the home of the legendary activist for women's voting rights, the site of her arrest (for voting!) in 1872; and Corn Hill, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and, with its new townhouses, apartments, small retail shops, and historic mansions, one of today's most fashionable and popular places in the city to live. Forum participants also visited the High Falls Entertainment District, a regional destination point on the Genesee River adjacent to these neighborhoods, and the Monroe Avenue commercial strip "that has begun to realize its potential" in supporting a large residential neighborhood on the city's southeast side. During lunch, participants heard about the importance of involving citizens in rebuilding neighborhoods. Rochester's commissioner of the department of community development, Thomas R. Argust, discussed the Neighbors Building Neighborhoods (NBN) program. By including a broad cross section of the community in the planning process, the NBN program is a good approach to citizen empowerment (see feature box on page 87). In Niagara Falls, said John C. Drake, the city's director of community development, "the most successful business in the main street area is run by a minority person from the neighborhood who caters to the minority community. The ultimate empowerment is economic empowerment. That, he said, is what is going to save any main street in a minority or low-income area--having entrepreneurs who will develop the products that will sell in the community." Utica, New York, has undertaken some actions that not everyone around the table agreed with, demolishing in the last five years 425 vacant buildings of the 700 the city owned, "mostly in our inner-city neighborhoods," according to urban economic development commissioner Thomas Larrabee. "It has made a difference," he claimed, by raising house prices, repositioning the area's image, creating more block associations, and strengthening a "Little Italy" neighborhood comprising residents of 17 ethnic backgrounds operating about 100 different businesses. "It's people taking back their neighborhoods," Larrabee said. "People are saying, 'Wow, something's happening. It's worth coming back.'" Speaking from his experience at SUNY-Buffalo, associate dean of the architecture school, John Bis, highlighted the "grass-roots efforts of a private entrepreneur," telling the mayors, "It's important for the city government to recognize where these little sparks occur and to latch onto them." Keith Getter, management consultant, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, New York City, pushed the matter further when he remarked, "Investing in the entrepreneurial spirit of our local residents is a key component to maintaining economic wealth in communities. Residents must be part of the partnership." So must other elements of the community. As so often stated in the mayors' forums, the importance of partnerships among the public, private, and nonprofit sectors surfaced as a major ingredient in urban revitalization. Rome Mayor Joseph Griffo spoke of "a new breed of elected officials, neighborhood leaders, and company executives--resourceful, energetic, and creative--who must be harnessed for action." Also, members of city councils, according to Mark L. Ryckman, Corning's city manager, must be brought into the equation. "We can have all the best intentions in the world, but if the political will isn't there, oftentimes these initiatives come unraveled. The city councils need to become part of the process. In our community, that largely has not happened." Iraci maintained that government has to help establish the right type of business climate. "Government has to assemble the parcels, get the land so it's bankable from an environmental point of view, and market it." Corning's mayor, Alan D. Lewis, said that he was going to bring the city council to Rochester "to look at what's happened here. If you can do it in [a town with] a population of 210,000 people, why wouldn't we be able to do it in [one with] a population of 12,000?" The mayor said he was "extremely encouraged" by what the participants saw in Rochester and wants "to build on what we've learned." Neighborhood and Downtown Retail Several participants drew an important distinction between downtown and neighborhood retail--a distinction that may seem obvious, but that usually becomes muddled in conversation. Mayor Alan J. Cohen of Ithaca observed that "no central business district will thrive without healthy neighborhoods around it, and healthy neighborhoods will not continue to be healthy if there's a deteriorating CBD. We have to pursue parallel courses of action in strengthening those two areas," but "no cookie-cutter approach works. We really have to look at the particulars of our neighborhoods to make sure retail fits." Griffo said that his biggest challenge was: "How do we reestablish the central business district? Essentially, there is no core area." Echoing the upstate New York plight, he continued: "Rome has many neighborhoods, but what used to be the core of the city is predominantly gone now." Ellen Baer, partner at New York City-based Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, commented, "What you need to do for neighborhood and downtown retail is often very different--different kinds of risks, different roles for the public sector, different ways of investing and financing." G. Lamont Blackstone, vice president of the Retail Initiative, based in New York, elaborated: "In downtown, revitalization has to include entertainment and restaurants as well as shopping; in neighborhoods, however, the focus is really on convenience-type businesses: supermarkets, drugstores, and complementary services." But Johnson, pointing to urban abandonment along Rochester's main street, despaired of downtown retail. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a thing of the past. I have no hopes of attracting any national retailers. We don't have the will here or the resources to engage in that level of subsidy. Just a block from here is a 1.2 million-square-foot mall. It's struggling--it's in bankruptcy." For Johnson, the key is neighborhood retail. The federal government can help stimulate downtown retail, noted Edward Giefer, policy director of the Center for Urban Development and Livability in Washington, D.C., by mixing uses in its buildings. "One of our renewed efforts is to get retail on the ground floors outside our buildings. We can generate foot traffic and retail opportunities with our workers and visitors to our buildings." He spoke of a McCormick & Schmick's restaurant in a federal building in Chicago, a McDonald's in Boston's new courthouse, coffee carts, farmers markets, and flower shops. "We've learned from mistakes in the past. We can be a catalyst and an anchor. We're looking for ways to keep our buildings alive after 5:00 p.m." Bis emphasized the importance of walk-in traffic, rather than "automobile-driven" traffic, for neighborhood retail. He described Allentown, a large historic neighborhood bordering downtown Buffalo where the streets have been narrowed to slow traffic, and "the retail is very successful. It's working." Yet he further noted that a more "suburban-style" shopping center, also within Buffalo's city limits on Elmwood Avenue, also was successful. "My point: You really can't look at a single plan for a single jurisdiction, because you have a multifaceted array of issues. And the public sector has to be very sensitive to private developers who want to go in and do certain kinds of things." But Blackstone warned against trying to use "a suburban format" in an urban neighborhood. "Retailers are still wedded to prototypes they developed that have worked well for them in the suburbs. They don't merchandise to the demographics of a particular neighborhood. It just doesn't work to drop a 45,000- to 50,000-square-foot box on a five-acre site. The challenge is to find a format that works in the inner city so that a major disconnect does not occur between a supermarket or shopping center and the surrounding retail, which is already part of the urban fabric." The Click and Mortar Business There was considerable discussion about the impact of the new economy on neighborhood retail. Smith listed three trends that have radically affected commercial activity in American cities. Two of them--the appearance of shopping malls and discount stores--have been detrimental, but the third--the Internet--will help, because "it provides a new way for retail businesses to reach customers, and new opportunities to expand their sales." E-commerce may offer mom-and-pop retailers with a wider customer base. Crawford said she believes "the Internet is going to help all of us grow." Banner spoke of seeing "homegrocer.com" trucks all over the inner-city streets of Los Angeles, calling them part of "the click and mortar business." However, e-commerce will be--at best--a mixed blessing. Bis noted, "If many of these stores are operating on a marginal level, they are going to have a very difficult time getting into the 'e-way' of doing business." Miksch thought that neighborhood and specialty retail shops would be less threatened by the Internet than the big boxes. "Shopping is a very tactile, personal, exploratory, and immediate experience we will never stop wanting as part of our lives." The good news for neighborhood retail is that the digital revolution will not supersede customers' need for face-to-face contact. Cities have developed because of the impulse to foster productivity by supporting human interaction at specific locations, according to Harvard professor Alex Krieger, writing in the ULI publication, Cities in the 21st Century. Being assimilated into the world of e-commerce will not signal the end of place-consciousness or place-dependent development. It Takes Leadership Charles R. Kendrick, Jr., managing director of Clarion Ventures, LLC, in Boston, offered a summation of the day's discussion that comprised observations as well as advice to the public officials:
The Alternative Building Code In his keynote remarks at the Mayors' Forum in Rochester, Hal Miksch referred to Jonathan Sandvick, a Cleveland architect, and his associate, M. Laik Ali, as having used Section 3408, Chapter 34, of the Ohio building code to recycle deteriorating old buildings. Such buildings stand vacant or underused primarily because they need work and have no user--two intertwined problems. If these buildings can be deemed cost effective for rehabilitation for marketable uses, then users will be interested in them. Section 3408 stems from the assumption that demolishing structures and starting new, much in vogue in the 1960s and early 1970s, is not the primary option to be used in an urban design strategy. Traditional building codes made it impossible to restore these structures to new uses. As the architects put it, "The buildings exceeded the height and area requirements under code for the type of building construction. This was a death warrant for many buildings." Flexibility was needed. Rehabilitating potentially salvageable structures was usually cost prohibitive, due to the difficulty of complying with all provisions of the code. Consequently, in an enlightened move in 1986, the Ohio Board of Building Standards added a new article (Section 3408) to its building code to make easier the rehabilitation process for most buildings constructed before March 1, 1959. (It is not applicable to institutional and high-hazard uses.) It establishes 18 specific criteria--height and area, smoke control, corridor walls, tenant and dwelling unit separations, means of egress, and maximum travel distance to an exit, among others--that have "sufficient latitude to achieve safe buildings without requiring full compliance" with the state building code. Section 3408 "is a creative, flexible method to achieve fire safety, emergency egress, and life safety for existing buildings without strict adherence to Articles 2 through 33" of the code. For example, it gives credit for a building's life safety/emergency egress features that already exist, provides a method to accomplish code compliance for buildings that exceed allowable height and area requirements, and makes it easier to comply with historic preservation guidelines. Section 3408 also makes it possible to save substantial rehabilitation costs by using existing features of the building (e.g., stairs, exposed structural elements, and other decorative details) that otherwise might be lost or substantially altered. As Miksch explained, "You don't always have to put in a second staircase. You don't always have to install sprinkler systems. This is a great tool." In the words of both architects, Section 3408 represents "the best hope to retain a building's existing character--those wonderful aesthetic and visually pleasing qualities that are often lost when trying to achieve conventional code compliance." A number of successful renovations in Cleveland offer proof. Karen Borland, an architect who specializes in historic preservation and works for the Sandvick Architects, Inc., points to Cleveland's Otis Terminal Warehouse complex just northwest of Public Square. A massive, 500,000-square-foot structure on the side of a hill, the complex contained some timber construction that would not be permitted today. But with the help of the alternative building code, "We got those buildings to work," she says. "They did not have to be demolished, and now they contain 249 new residential apartments with internal parking. The trick is to get the height and area to work, and to preserve the historical elements. And that's the value of Section 3408."--W.H.H. Neighbors Building Neighborhoods Rochester's Neighbors Building Neighborhoods (NBN) program changed the relationship between this upstate New York city and its residents. The early 1990s saw distrust between city government and local residents. While Rochester's 36 well-organized neighborhood organizations should have promoted positive partnerships, just the opposite was happening. Enter NBN. Rochester Mayor William A. Johnson, Jr., guided the development of this innovative planning process. With the concurrence of neighborhood associations, the city was divided into ten planning sectors, each of which was challenged to write its respective three-year plan. From this effort-- totally volunteer driven--came ten plans that proposed 895 activities. The planning process took two years (1993 to 1995) to organize and complete, and the implementation period took three years (1996 to 1999). This year, a second six-month NBN process updated the original plans, and now an 18-month implementation period has begun. To support this nationally acclaimed and award-winning model, the city created a step-by-step neighborhood planning workbook, held rallies/celebrations at critical points throughout the process, trained its planning staff in group facilitation and mediation skills, and adopted an asset-planning (as opposed to a deficit-planning) approach. Mayor Johnson directed his departments to use their resources to help implement the various recommendations. At the end of the first implementation phase, 78 percent of the proposed activities were completed, including major items such as the creation of new sector-oriented community development corporations, a deal for five new supermarkets, new housing developments, the passage of a noise ordinance, and the creation of neighborhood empowerment teams (NETs). This NET model deployed property code enforcement officers with police officers into six neighborhood offices. Over time, other support systems were developed by the city to ensure continuous improvement in the sector planning process. For example, the NBN program provides courses to increase citizen empowerment. The NeighborLink system networks NBN-dedicated computers in all ten sectors. This year, geographic information system workstations will be installed, allowing residents to conduct more sophisticated neighborhood planning. Also, foundations, corporations, and the United Way have begun shifting resources for use in projects that NBN deems priorities. NBN has effected positive change in Rochester, fostering optimism and renewed faith in government/citizen partnerships. It also has helped make possible the development and adoption of the Renaissance 2010 Plan, Rochester's first comprehensive redevelopment plan in more than three decades. With NBN firmly established in the lifeblood of Rochester and the Renaissance Plan implementation begun, the city has launched its third and final phase of the complete revision of its 25-year-old zoning code. --W.H.H. For more information, contact Thomas Argust, commissioner of community development, 30 Church Street, Room 125B, Rochester, New York 14614; 716-428-6550; Web site: www.rochersternbn.com. Reviving Inner Suburbs Since World War II, many big-city downtowns and residential neighborhoods have declined as growth, jobs, and residents migrated to newly developing suburbs. Now, many older inner-ring suburbs, which were the first threat to those downtowns and city neighborhoods, have started to decline themselves as the aforementioned entities move even farther out. Outside Chicago, for example, an arc of deteriorating inner suburbs--some little more than 25 to 30 years old--stretches over 60 miles, beginning just south of O'Hare Airport and going into northwestern Indiana. The nation's declining inner suburbs share many characteristics: run-down and even abandoned housing, decaying and ill-equipped schools, increasingly dilapidated and obsolete infrastructure such as roads and sewers, a lack of growth in median household incomes, stagnant or shrinking tax bases, and rising commercial vacancy rates that have left once-thriving thoroughfares riddled with empty storefronts and closed workplaces. The problems of deteriorating inner-ring suburbs are compounded because these communities have fewer resources than big-city downtowns with which to turn themselves around. Most downtowns have jobs and tax-generating office buildings and hotels, a convention center, civic landmarks such as museums and libraries, and major institutional anchors including hospitals and universities, plus historic neighborhoods and loft districts that have become gentrified. Most inner-ring suburbs, however, were developed as little more than cookie-cutter residential subdivisions with a few shops. Hence, they have fewer resources to call upon. Moreover, younger, renovation-minded homebuyers have not yet embraced post-World War II split-level houses. And artists, or at least well-paid younger professionals with a creative flair, are not converting 1950s- and 1960s-era strip malls into lofts. The growing problem of deteriorating inner-ring suburbs, however, has not gone unnoticed. Civic and business leaders, planners, and academics have proposed a wide range of programs, including accelerated building permits and tax incentives to encourage redevelopment and regional tax sharing to help hard-pressed communities. But those strategies are not enough to solve the complex and interwoven issues that contribute to the decline of inner-ring suburbs. And some ideas--regional tax sharing, for instance--are so controversial that they stand little chance of being implemented in many metropolitan areas. How can already declining inner suburbs be rescued and how can others be prevented from going downhill? One creative and proven, but often-overlooked, strategy is increased use of public/private partnerships. Rather than municipalities merely doling out zoning breaks as incentives or subsidies to developers, today's public/private partnerships call upon the combined resources of both government and the private sector, with each partner bringing its skill and strength to bear on the most appropriate reclamation activity. About ten years ago, Anaheim, California, the home of Disneyland, 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, foresaw problems for its thriving tourism and convention industry. Convention city rivals like San Francisco, San Diego, and particularly Las Vegas were busy improving and reinventing themselves. But there was a larger problem: Anaheim did not look like a world-renowned destination. Outside Disneyland's gates, the city consisted of just typical suburban sprawl--and aging suburban sprawl at that. Anaheim needed to make widespread public improvements that it could not afford. Disney wanted those improvements to strengthen its amusement park, and it had the money to help fund them. The company also wanted to create new attractions in Anaheim, and it could not expand without the city's support and approval. Therefore, Disney and the city government formed a public/private partnership that transformed the 1,100 acres, or 2.2 square miles, around Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center, an area known as the Anaheim Resort District. With support from Disney, the city has rebuilt five miles of roadways with tree-shaded medians and heavily landscaped sidewalks, implemented traffic enhancements, buried the infrastructure for all utilities except high-tension power, which was rerouted, removed all pole signs, and modernized and expanded the convention center. With the city's support, Disney upgraded Disneyland, built the new Downtown Disney retail and entertainment center, and constructed Disney's California Adventure, which consists of a second Anaheim theme park and resort hotel next to Disneyland. Because of these public/private projects, more than 3,500 new hotel rooms in Anaheim had been approved by the end of 2000, approximately 14,000 new jobs have been created, and the city's tax revenues have risen substantially--allowing infrastructure improvements and redevelopment projects to be implemented in other parts of Anaheim, all without raising taxes or drawing money from its general fund. (See "Reinventing Anaheim," page 66, Urban Land, March 2000.) Of course, some skeptics suggest that Anaheim scarcely represents a widely applicable public/private partnership redevelopment model. How many inner suburbs have an economic engine like Disneyland? Yet, others point out that many suburbs have a significant private or institutional resource--a major real estate owner, a college or university, a hospital, even an active business community--that can be a partner in a successful improvement program. Those seeking to reclaim their inner-ring suburbs can reference the examples of successful, ongoing public/private partnerships in big cities and a few forward-thinking suburban communities to find the strategies needed to jump-start redevelopment efforts. However, many suburban projects misleadingly carry the public/private partnership label. A public/ private partnership is not a city-sponsored redevelopment project that simply grants subsidies and tax incentives to attract private developers. Nor is it a redevelopment project in which the city acquires a site and then sells it to private developers, often with attendant development guidelines. A true public/private partnership involves public agencies and private companies and/or developers working together to create a common vision for the redevelopment project, pooling funds and talent to carry out the vision together. Many suburbs have a major real estate owner with a stake in the continued prosperity of the community as a whole. In 1995, Essex Capital Partners, Ltd., a New York City-based investment and development company, purchased Rockville Metro Center, a failed 500,000-square-foot mall that had been closed since 1990 in suburban Rockville, Maryland, northwest of Washington, D.C. Working with the city's concept plan, the firm partnered with the city, the county, the state, other private developers, service organizations, and other groups to create a $300 million high-density, mixed-use, 1.5 million-square-foot town center on eight acres of land to help revitalize Rockville's central business district. The city, county, state, and Essex Capital have contributed $6 million each to infrastructure development. Over the next 15 years, new offices, stores, housing, civic and cultural facilities, and urban parks should help to create a revitalized downtown for Rockville. A major hospital also can serve as a catalyst for public/private redevelopment. The federal closure in the 1990s of the one-square-mile Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, threatened to multiply and intensify the economic problems caused by the recent closings of nearby Lowry Air Force Base and Stapleton International Airport. Aurora's city council acted quickly, however, creating the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority (FRA) in 1995. The FRA, in turn, began quiet negotiations with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (UCHSC). The UCHSC, which needed a large tract of land for future growth, was able to acquire between 1997 and 2001 the land under the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center at no cost, thanks to an educational public benefit conveyance available as part of the federal base closure process. The UCHSC is creating a new medical center to anchor the property. The city of Aurora is renovating several buildings for use as the Aurora Police and Fire Department Training Complex, building a child development center, and creating several parks and open space. The UCHSC and the FRA also are working together to develop a 160-acre bioresearch park adjacent to the medical center campus. Thus, this public/private partnership is spurring redevelopment of the vacant and underused land adjacent to and near the Fitzsimons site. In implementing a public/private partnership, suburban jurisdictions must look beyond their borders for assistance. Minnesota's Northwest Corridor Partnership, for example, is mobilizing the resources of Minneapolis and five suburbs to redevelop the County Road 81 corridor, which passes through those communities. Working together, these cities are making transit, road, and other infrastructure improvements within the corridor, while the private sector is investing in and spearheading new and redevelopment projects. As inner-ring suburbs have discovered in recent years, big-city problems--inadequate public services, declining tax base, aging infrastructure--do not remain contained within the city limits. A number of issues now affecting inner-ring suburbs will not stop at their borders, either. Many newer suburbs that are thriving today face a future of decline if they do not act now. This is not simply their problem. Just as a decaying inner neighborhood harms a city, decaying inner-ring suburbs can threaten an entire metropolitan area's economic future. Comprehensive public/private partnerships, however, can offer the tools, the vision, and the funding to strengthen inner-ring suburbs and end their downward spiral.--Timur F. Galen, senior vice president and general manager at Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative, design, development, and research arm of the Walt Disney Company's Parks and Resorts Division, based in Glendale, California. William H. Hudnut III is senior resident fellow ULI/Joseph C. Canizaro Chair for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. Reproduced with permission from the July issue of Urban Land Magazine, (c) 2001 ULI-the Urban Land Institute, Washington, D.C. www.uli-la.org | |
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