Author: marynewsom

If you’ve checked the comments on my Dec. 9 post “The Hottest Story Going,” you’ll see a lot of pro-con about impact fees. Jonathan Marshall, commerce director for Cabarrus County, shares this:
“Statements like this one from your blog – ‘Usually, though not always, the cost of the fee is included in the price of the house you buy or apartment you rent’ – are too often made without challenge. There is considerable research on the subject and it is not that simple. Ironically, one of the best summaries of that research is a document prepared for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission in 1990 by Duncan & Associates. … The section that addresses it most directly is Chapter VI.”
What the report says is that researchers differ on whether impact fees and impact taxes end up being passed on to homebuyers or passed backward to whoever sells land to the developer, and that other factors come into play, too, such as whether neighboring jurisdictions have impact fees, and whether the market is booming or sluggish. In other words, financing is complex.
That 15-year-old report, “Infrastructure Financing Techniques” is one I wrote about a year ago: “A 14-year-late debate,” Oct. 2, 2004.”
I described how it was quietly decided by someone in city government in 1990 to instruct the consultants, Duncan & Associates, not to actually make any recommendations about how to finance infrastructure.
I guess city staff types (or politicians?) were worried they’d recommend impact fees or land transfer taxes, both of which the local developers’ lobby treat with the affection they’d show Karl Marx. (Publicly. Privately it’s not hard to find developers who think impact fees might be better than the current unpredictable system of what they dub “extractions.”)
Impact fees obviously wouldn’t be a silver bullet to kill all growth and funding problems. After all, Wake County has them and they’re still looking at some painfully expensive school-building needs. But notice: Impact fees don’t seem to have slowed Wake County development, or Chatham County’s either, the way developers here – and their politician mouthpieces
– would have you believe.

There I was in Seaside, Fla., cradle of New Urbanism, mothership of a major architectural movement, a place that gets as much ink in architecture circles as Madonna gets in the real world.
Since Seaside got famous in the 1980s (it broke ground in 1981), critics have said it’s Disney-esque, unreal, nostalgic, elitist – a haunt for Stepford Spouses.
So, what was it really like? (Add your two cents’ worth, below.) Until I went there for several days last week, I reserved judgment. You can’t really assess places until you see them. I’m a fan of New Urbanism, or at least of what New Urbanism really is, as opposed to what some critics or cheesy developers say it is.
What’s New Urbanism? An architectural movement to revive the ways neighborhoods, towns and cities developed for centuries. But in the 20th century those patterns were scrapped by, among others, Modernist architects, grandiose urban planners, single-use zoning laws and traffic engineers. A New Urbanist neighborhood has narrower streets, pedestrian comforts (Seaside doesn’t really have many sidewalks, though it’s easy to walk through), connected streets, a blend of dwellings (houses, apartments, townhouses, etc.) and uses (residences, stores, workplaces). Houses sit close to each other and the street, to encourage neighborliness. Densities are higher than typical suburbia.
Seaside, designed by the Miami firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk, was the first place to get famous for honing those principles, although other architects and planners were also espousing them. Developer Robert Davis made a ton of money, and the place is hugely popular.
My verdict? Seaside is charming, especially if you like picket fences and Southern-style homes with big porches. (Most academic types and architecture writers don’t.)
Is Seaside real? Of course not. Yellow card! Is Wild Dunes real? Kiawah? Figure Eight Island? It’s a beach development.
Is it only for rich people? Again, yellow card! It’s a beach development. As designed, Seaside had more affordable places than most beach resorts. But it was wildly successful, so prices zoomed. The last undeveloped beach lot – 50 feet wide – just sold for $4 million.
Is it elitist? I see why the place sets some people’s teeth on edge. The marketing prose is excruciatingly high-concept – e.g. short gushing essays about how special it is that Southerners give names to their beach houses – with the faintest aroma of self-congratulation. It offers wine festivals, chamber music on the lawn, high-end decor shops and an artist-in-residence program. It did give me the urge to prop a rusty Corvair up on cinderblocks and serve Cheerwine and Slim Jims at my next soiree.
Conclusion: Seaside is lovely (the Ruskin Place courtyard/park is particularly beautiful) , but no longer unique – which is why it’s so significant. It proved customers crave places built to look less like Levitttown and more like Chapel Hill or Charleston. It was a demonstration project.
And it launched a huge movement in planning and architecture. Without Seaside, there’d probably be no Baxter in Fort Mill, no Afton Village in Concord, no First Ward Place housing project in Charlotte, no Southern Village in Chapel Hill. That’s its major significance. Whether it’s “real” or “elitist” is, in the end, flatly irrelevant.

It’s the biggest story in Charlotte – and Union, Cabarrus, Iredell counties and most other places around here. Bigger than the Bobcats. Bigger than their new arena. Even bigger than Ric Flair’s divorce. (Disagree? See below.)
It’s growth. Development. It’s what people in the old days used to call “progress.” That sounds so quaint now, like calling a sofa a davenport, or a fridge the icebox.
And most everyone has an opinion about it, from “It’s my property, don’t tell me what I can do,” to “Stop the developers!” to “No more density!” to “No more sprawl!” – two opinions widely shared yet mutally exclusive. And that’s not even getting into the whol Wal-Mart melee: Agent of Satan or WWJ(W)Wal-Mart’s Where Jesus (Would) Shop.
That’s why I launched this blog. I’ve got a gazillion opinions, and judging from the e-mails and letters I see, you do, too. I write a regular column for the Charlotte Observer but there’s more to discuss than there is newsprint available to hold the discussion. So …..
Let’s get a discussion going. How’s this for starters: Impact fees?
Those are per-unit or per-lot fees that developers pay to local governments to help pay for schools, or streets, or parks, etc. (Two important things to remember: Usually, though not always, the cost of the fee is included in the price of the house you buy or apartment you rent. And the income they bring in isn’t enough to fully pay for the schools, or the roads or other government services the residents of the new development require. I.e. they don’t replace property taxes.)
Do we need them in Charlotte, or in the places nearby? If so, what should they help pay for?
You can post your opinions below, or respond to others’ opinions.