Category: Smart Growth

“Prudent Growth”? Multifamily McMansions?

A Coconut Grove, Fla., McMansion circa 2003. Are McMansions destined to be apartment houses in the next decade? (Miami Herald photo)
I came away from last week’s New Partners for Smart Growth conference with a notebook full of interesting ideas, factoids and thoughts:

• Can we scrap the term Smart Growth? It insults people, which doesn’t help anyone make needed political and business changes. But “sustainability” isn’t much better. For one thing, the way a community develops is much more complex than buying fluorescent light bulbs, which is what “sustainability” means to a lot of people. “I try to avoid using the word ‘sustainability,’ ” Raleigh Planning Director Mitch Silver, who is president-elect of the American Planning Association, told the crowd Saturday. The term means too many things to too many people, he said.
I vote for not calling it anything, since any good planner/urban designer/policy maker worth her or his salt knows what to do anyway. If a term is absolutely required, what about “Prudent Growth” or “Responsible Growth”?

• Two different planning/development experts predicted that many of the McMansions built in the past decade will end up being broken into multifamily housing. Arthur “Chris” Nelson, who gave an interesting demographics presentation, even offered floor plans for converting a 6,000-square-foot-house – “modest by McMansion standards” – into three apartments. He noted that multifamily’s share of the demand for new housing 2010-20 will be 50 percent. Considering population, age and market-demand projections, the U.S. is overbuilt on single-family housing, he said, and underbuilt on multifamily.
Silver, of Raleigh, also pointed to that likely result. “What are we going to do with those 4,000-square-foot mansions out in the suburbs,” he asked.
• Silver gave an excellent talk about Raleigh’s planning and zoning efforts. He self-deprecatingly noted the city’s “Sprawleigh” nickname and described a wide-ranging effort Planning Raleigh 2030, that aimed to get residents to envision what they wanted their city to look like in two decades. (They used different outreach methods for different age groups.) The city’s new comprehensive plan was adopted in 2009. Unlike Charlotte, that isn’t all the city did. “If you just have a policy plan sitting on a shelf, it has no value,” Silver said. “It’s important to have the one-two punch” of adopting the plan and then codifying it.
So the city is completely rewriting its zoning code, which will be, in part, a form-based code. That’s a code that worries less about what you’re doing inside the building (office? store? apartments?) and more about how the building behaves in its surroundings. “Sprawl is fiscally irresponsible and frankly, too expensive to maintain,” he said. (I guess he doesn’t have to worry about REBIC and influential suburban subdivision developers complaining to his bosses when he says things like that, right out loud and in public.)

• The Atlanta BeltLine project was described as “the most transformative project in Atlanta since the airport was built.” (quote is from Atlanta City Council member Joyce Sheperd). It’s a $2.8 billion redevelopment project to create public parks, multi-use trails and transit along a mostly abandoned 22-mile railroad corridor that encircles downtown Atlanta and connects 45 neighborhoods. It’s a huge partnership, and involves a 6.500-acre tax increment financing district (covering 8 percent of the city’s land area). Along with local, state and federal money expected to be spent, a nonprofit Atlanta BeltLine Partnership is raising money from philanthropic and private sources, as well as local, state and federal funds.

Almost half the right-of-way has been leased, optioned or purchased. So far 3.5 miles of permanent trails have been built, as well as 8 miles of interim hiking trails.
Brian Leary, CEO of Atlanta BeltLine Inc., told the conference gathering, “For the last 14 years Atlanta has been looking for its next Olympic moment.” He clearly thinks the BeltLine is it.

Seeking solutions to suburban problems

As cities and counties across North Carolina and the nation scour budgets for ways to trim spending and – at least one hopes – make more economically prudent decisions for the future, they should look hard at what last 50 years of spread-out, low-density, auto-focused development has cost them. And how to change those costly ways.

After all, it costs a municipality (and rate-payers) more to spread sewer lines across subdivisions with 2- or 3-houses per acre than across blocks with 20 or 30 dwellings per acre. It costs more to serve cul-de-sac neighborhoods with adequate fire and emergency services, because in order to meet acceptable arrive-by times in areas with disconnected streets, you need more stations and personnel. (Here’s what I wrote in February 2009 about that point – “Sprawl’s dipping into your pocketbook,” and a Charlotte city study that illustrates that point.)

Large expanses of highway right-of-way mean large expanses of property off the tax rolls. Big surface parking lots are not the best way to get high-value property onto the tax rolls. And so on.

But we’ve built our suburban style, single-use neighborhoods with streets that don’t connect and shopping centers you have to drive to. What do we do now?

That’s the topic of an upcoming conference at N.C. State University in Raleigh on Feb. 12: “Sustainable Suburbs: Re-Imagining the Inner Ring.” (Disclosure: I’ll be moderating the conference.)

Here’s my quick two-cents on the overall topic:

Cent No. 1: “Inner-ring suburbs” means different things to different people. Does it mean the first municipalities beyond the city limits of a major city, such as Mint Hill, Matthews, Pineville, etc., regardless of when they were formed and how they were built? Or does it mean neighborhoods built on a suburban template, even those within the limits of the major city, such as Charlotte’s Merry Oaks, Chantilly, Sherwood Forest, even Myers Park? I hope we can define the terms before we end up talking at cross-purposes.

Cent No. 2: Many planners, designers and even transportation officials understand the need for connected, walkable streets, higher-density buildings, mixed uses and access to transit – things lacking in many neighborhoods built after World War II. . But in many instances that form of development still isn’t happening (and wasn’t, when the financial crisis put a stop to almost all development in these parts.) So it would seem that the major stumbling blocks aren’t in planners’ minds, but in other areas: policies and laws, financing practices, existing ordinances, politics, and even in Americans’ cultural expectations. Can those stumbling blocks be overcome?

Conference registration closes Feb. 7. Among the speakers will be:

• William Hudnut III, ex-congressman, ex-16-term mayor of Indianapolis, author, Urban Land Institute fellow emeritus, clergyman and all-around knowledgeable fellow. Among his books: “Halfway to Everywhere: A portrait of America’s first tier suburbs.”

• Ellen Dunham-Jones, co-author of the award-winning “Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.” She’ll talk about the problem of dead malls, vacant commercial strips, aging office parks and apartment complexes. Her book offers several dozen examples of suburban retrofit projects.

• Patrick Phillips, CEO of the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, who’ll talk about what the financial crisis may mean for the prospect of building a more sustainable suburbia.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll almost certainly be interested also in this early February Charlotte conference. The New Partners for Smart Growth conference, “Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities,” will draw planners, designers, transportation and public health professionals, and others to the Westin Feb. 3-5. The website says scholarships are available, but deadline to apply is Jan. 14. It’s sponsored by the Local Government Commission, a Sacramento-based nonprofit (and not the N.C. governmental agency).

Seeking solutions to suburban problems

As cities and counties across North Carolina and the nation scour budgets for ways to trim spending and – at least one hopes – make more economically prudent decisions for the future, they should look hard at what last 50 years of spread-out, low-density, auto-focused development has cost them. And how to change those costly ways.

After all, it costs a municipality (and rate-payers) more to spread sewer lines across subdivisions with 2- or 3-houses per acre than across blocks with 20 or 30 dwellings per acre. It costs more to serve cul-de-sac neighborhoods with adequate fire and emergency services, because in order to meet acceptable arrive-by times in areas with disconnected streets, you need more stations and personnel. (Here’s what I wrote in February 2009 about that point – “Sprawl’s dipping into your pocketbook,” and a Charlotte city study that illustrates that point.)

Large expanses of highway right-of-way mean large expanses of property off the tax rolls. Big surface parking lots are not the best way to get high-value property onto the tax rolls. And so on.

But we’ve built our suburban style, single-use neighborhoods with streets that don’t connect and shopping centers you have to drive to. What do we do now?

That’s the topic of an upcoming conference at N.C. State University in Raleigh on Feb. 12: “Sustainable Suburbs: Re-Imagining the Inner Ring.” (Disclosure: I’ll be moderating the conference.)

Here’s my quick two-cents on the overall topic:

Cent No. 1: “Inner-ring suburbs” means different things to different people. Does it mean the first municipalities beyond the city limits of a major city, such as Mint Hill, Matthews, Pineville, etc., regardless of when they were formed and how they were built? Or does it mean neighborhoods built on a suburban template, even those within the limits of the major city, such as Charlotte’s Merry Oaks, Chantilly, Sherwood Forest, even Myers Park? I hope we can define the terms before we end up talking at cross-purposes.

Cent No. 2: Many planners, designers and even transportation officials understand the need for connected, walkable streets, higher-density buildings, mixed uses and access to transit – things lacking in many neighborhoods built after World War II. . But in many instances that form of development still isn’t happening (and wasn’t, when the financial crisis put a stop to almost all development in these parts.) So it would seem that the major stumbling blocks aren’t in planners’ minds, but in other areas: policies and laws, financing practices, existing ordinances, politics, and even in Americans’ cultural expectations. Can those stumbling blocks be overcome?

Conference registration closes Feb. 7. Among the speakers will be:

• William Hudnut III, ex-congressman, ex-16-term mayor of Indianapolis, author, Urban Land Institute fellow emeritus, clergyman and all-around knowledgeable fellow. Among his books: “Halfway to Everywhere: A portrait of America’s first tier suburbs.”

• Ellen Dunham-Jones, co-author of the award-winning “Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.” She’ll talk about the problem of dead malls, vacant commercial strips, aging office parks and apartment complexes. Her book offers several dozen examples of suburban retrofit projects.

• Patrick Phillips, CEO of the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, who’ll talk about what the financial crisis may mean for the prospect of building a more sustainable suburbia.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll almost certainly be interested also in this early February Charlotte conference. The New Partners for Smart Growth conference, “Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities,” will draw planners, designers, transportation and public health professionals, and others to the Westin Feb. 3-5. The website says scholarships are available, but deadline to apply is Jan. 14. It’s sponsored by the Local Government Commission, a Sacramento-based nonprofit (and not the N.C. governmental agency).

REBIC’s long list of ‘No’s’

Several months back I had coffee with the affable Andy Munn, policy director for the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, aka REBIC, the most influential local real estate and development lobbying group. I got the idea that the group, which in the past has had (my words here, not his) a “Just Say No” reputation among local government staffers and environmental and planning activists, might be trying to change its image a bit.

Fast forward to Monday night’s City Council meeting (“Foxx: Be flexible with developers”), where REBIC members were out in force. Mayor Anthony Foxx had put onto the agenda a staff presentation about a cluster of new measures that REBIC doesn’t like:
– the proposed (not yet adopted) stronger tree ordinance.
– the Urban Street Design Guidelines policy (not yet adopted into ordinances and thus, not required of developers, either)
– the post-construction controls ordinance (the only one developers currently must actually follow). Many big guns were in attendance: Bill Daleure of Crosland Inc., Ned Curran of the Bissell Companies, as well as Charlotte Chamber honcho Bob Morgan.

As the Observer editorial board opined this morning (“Don’t let ‘flexible’ morph into ‘gutting’ “) just building cheap isn’t always smart. When you add in the future costs to taxpayers to retrofit and expand your street network/restore polluted streams/mitigate flooding — i.e. millions of dollars — it makes the estimated increment of $1,900 to $2,900 to the cost of new housing (spread over a 30-year mortgage) seem a bit less of a problem.

That said, a city that didn’t look seriously at the combined effects of its regulations on the costs of building would be irresponsible. The point is to look at the big picture and make intelligent choices, as best you can. Further, I hear developers of all types, not just the REBIC types, complain about bureaucratic nightmares dealing with multiple government agencies on complicated plans and technical issues. So complaints about lack of flexibility and/or inconsistencies resonate with me.

But here’s a problem: Even when REBIC has legitimate points it’s virtually impossible to sort them out from the cloud of anti-everything rhetoric it’s been floating for something like 30 years.

I recall a famous scene when then-REBIC executive director Mark Cramer spoke at a City Council debate in 1998 over whether to require developers to build more sidewalks in new subdivisions. Of course REBIC opposed it, because it would force developers to spend more money on subdivisions. (Though I must say I doubt they had to shrink their profit margins.) Cramer, after listening to pleas for good sidewalks on behalf of children, the elderly and people in wheelchairs, noted that sidewalks are good things. But, he added: “You can have too much of a good thing.”

I think REBIC and its close relative, the Chamber’s land use committee, would have more credibility in many of its complaints if it hadn’t, over the years, fought virtually every environmental and growth-management measure proposed by local governments, dating to before the term Smart Growth was even invented.

It’s a long list. It includes: the city bicycle plan, the floodplain ordinance, the stream buffer ordinance, watershed ordinances, the aforementioned sidewalk requirements, a county farmland preservation measure, a pilot project in Huntersville to preserve rural land and efforts a few decades ago to channel the overdevelopment in South Charlotte into other areas by limiting where new sewer lines are built. (That last is a classic planning technique being used all over the country – but not in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Developer John Crosland Jr. simply got state government to give him permits for private sewer plants and kept on building subdivisions.)

Quite an impressive list of opposition, I’d say. And to be fair I will note that anyone is free to lobby any elected official on anything. When environmental regulations and planning initiatives are gutted or stalled for years, and when city staff is ordered to “compromise with developers” over already-compromised proposals – a tradition staffers hired from other metro areas have told me privately they’re shocked to hear here – it’s elected officials who do that, not REBIC.

Streetcar seems to have momentum

Judging by the votes at a City Council transportation committee meeting this afternoon, the council is likely to vote Monday to apply for a couple of federal grants for transit. One would be for a $15 million project to add more buses on Central Avenue, Beatties Ford Road and out to the airport, essentially doubling the frequency to every 10 minutes. As Patsy Kinsey said – matching what an Observer editorial on Tuesday said – that decision is a “no-brainer.”

The other grant is trickier. It would be for $25 million to build a 1.5-mile section of the city’s proposed streetcar project. This part would go from Presbyterian Hospital down Elizabeth Avenue (where tracks are already laid) and East Trade Street to the Transportation Center. (If you’re not from around here you may not realize Elizabeth and Trade are the same street, with a name change).

The committee voted 3-2 to recommend the city go for the grant. Voting for: committee chairman David Howard, at-large rep Susan Burgess, District 1 rep Kinsey. Voting against: District 7 rep Warren Cooksey, District 4 rep Michael Barnes (who is running for district attorney in November).

Total project cost would be $37 million if the city decided not to buy new streetcars but to use three “replica” (that is, faux historic) trolley cars it owns. How to make up the $12 million difference from the $25M grant? City staff proposed that the council, if it wanted, could use $2.5 million still unspent from a streetcar planning budget line item, $4 million remaining in a “Smart Growth” fund that City Manager Curt Walton said was set up about 10 years ago but never completely spent, and it could take $5.5 million from $10.5 million that remains, unspent, in a reserve fund for economic development. The staff had also pointed to the option to reallocate $7 million from its business corridor revitalization program, but the council members at the committee meeting didn’t like that idea.

Barnes’ objection: Using the economic development money might mean less money available in the future for improvements to the North Tryon Street light rail corridor. Cooksey (who in 2009 voted against spending any city money for the streetcar project) said he worried that it would not be taken well by the city’s partner communities in the Metropolitan Transit Commission. Especially the North Mecklenburg towns still waiting, somewhat patiently, for money to be found to build their commuter rail line. He also said you could do just as much for transportation if you used the “found” money to build sidewalks and bike lanes.

I have to say, it always amazes me how city managers can find little pockets of millions of dollars just when their council member bosses need them. $4 million for “Smart Growth”? Who knew?

Counting likely votes Monday, I’d say the streetcar wins, 7-4. Mayor Anthony Foxx, remember, doesn’t vote on those sorts of things.

EPA video spotlights Charlotte, Dilworth

New video posted on the EPA’s Web site lauds the city’s Urban Street Design Guidelines and the East Boulevard Road Diet, which illustrates the city’s transportation design goals. Check it out. Mayor Anthony Foxx, ex-Mayor Pat McCrory, council member Susan Burgess, ex-council member and current city department head Patrick Mumford and others talk about how great the Urban Street Design Guidelines are.

It stems from the city’s National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, announced in December, in the “Policies and Regulations” category for the USDG.

Yet the developers’ lobby, the local Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, as well as influential, long-time real estate magnate John Crosland Jr., are still urging the city to dial back – or un-adopt, or never actually codify into ordinances, or otherwise eviscerate – those same USDG. They don’t like the requirements for modestly shorter blocks, or the width of the planting strips (wide enough so street trees will survive) or the general policy to build more streets and sidewalks in new developments. It’ll add cost, they say. And yep, it will.

But what’s the cost of congestion? What’s the cost of not being able to ride a bicycle or walk anywhere? What’s the cost of street trees that die? What’s the cost of having to retrofit streets and build sidewalks into already built neighborhoods – at taxpayer expense. The costs exist. It’s just a question of where you inject them into the growth process: at the start, or later on and spread among a wider group of payers, i.e. us taxpayers.

Charlotte snags ‘Smart Growth’ award

Although Charlotte’s policy to design streets to better accommodate pedestrians and bicycles remains under assault by the local developers’ lobby – who claim the extra pavement required for sidewalks and more streets isn’t good for the environment – note that the Environmental Protection Agency has given the city an award for those very same Urban Street Design Guidelines.

The EPA announced today that Charlotte is one of four winners of its Smart Growth Awards.
Click on this link to the EPA web site, which should be updated after 3 p.m. Here’s what the press release says:

• Policies and Regulations: City of Charlotte for Urban Street Design Guidelines. As the central city in a rapidly growing metropolitan area, Charlotte, N.C., is under intense development pressures. Rather than continue the automobile-dominated development patterns of the last 50 years, Charlotte adopted Urban Street Design Guidelines to make walking, bicycling, and transit more appealing and to make the city more attractive and sustainable.

Other winners:

Overall Excellence: Lancaster County (Pa.) Planning Commission for Envision Lancaster County. “Lancaster County, in south-central Pennsylvania, is known for its historic towns and villages, and its fertile farmland. To maintain the county’s character, its diverse economy, and its natural resources for future generations, the Lancaster County Planning Commission established a countywide comprehensive growth management plan, which protects valuable farmland and historic landscapes by directing development to established towns and cities in the county.”

• Built Projects: Chicago Housing Authority, FitzGerald Associates Architects and Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation for Parkside of Old Town. “Parkside of Old Town sits on eight city blocks that were once home to a public housing complex notorious for criminal activity. The redevelopment has transformed the neighborhood by reconnecting it to downtown Chicago and tying together mixed-income housing, parks, and new shops and restaurants.”

• Smart Growth and Green Building: City of Tempe, Ariz. for the Tempe Transportation Center. “The Tempe Transportation Center is a model for sustainable design, a vibrant, mixed-use regional transportation hub that incorporates innovative and green building elements tailored to the Southwest desert environment. The Tempe Transportation Center is a true multi-modal facility that integrates a light rail stop, the main city bus station, and paths for bicyclists and pedestrians.”

Is it Smart Growth or something else?

What does the term “Smart Growth” mean to you? It’s one of those terms whose original meaning has been washed away under a deluge of rhetoric, obfuscation, bureaucratic co-option and developer-marketing brochures.

Two things reminded me of what we ought to be thinking about, if we’re trying to grow in a smart way in this region.

Today, I ran across this article (link) from David Crossley of Houston Tomorrow about a Texas Smart Growth bill that Gov. Rick Perry vetoed. Crossley writes that Perry (and many large developers) prefer the status quo of land speculation and intense government subsidies of sprawl development. It’s an interesting look at how another fast-growing Sun Belt state is dealing (or not dealing with) with its challenges.

That piggybacked on a discussion yesterday with Rebecca Yarbrough of the regional CONNECT effort (in which two Charlotte area Councils of Government and the Charlotte Regional Partnership are working on regional growth/environment initiatives). She was trying to describe what happens when incremental growth decisions add up to a larger, more costly future.
Imagine a Farmer Jones, she said. He’s getting old and decides not to farm anymore. So he starts selling off his land, piecemeal, to developers. After all, his land is his version of a pension or a 401(k) – his retirement fund. He’s perfectly free to make these decisions, of course. We all make decisions like that.

But as his land is developed over time into several subdivisions, those decisions have significant impacts on the taxpayers of his county. That’s because government services to suburban subdivisions typically cost more than the government recoups in taxes. (Numerous studies bear this out, although obviously it isn’t universally true. Very expensive or very dense mixed-use subdivisions would show different results.) The subdivisions also cost more than the services typically provided to farmland. So Farmer Jones’ private and understandable decisions about retirement eventually add significant costs to his county government – and his county’s taxpayers.

A smart county trying to make smart decisions about its growth would recognize that it needs to help the Farmer Joneses AND make growth decisions with more forethought than simply reacting to the ad hoc results of disconnected private decisions. That the challenge that many metro regions face.

The Central Avenue challenge

Wonderful discussion about retrofitting suburbia. If you haven’t read the comments, I recommend them.

Retrofitting can be expensive for taxpayers, when a city has to build sidewalks, add storm drains and so on. The city’s changes in recent years — requiring sidewalks, better street designs, etc. — help with new construction only. Even the city’s admirable, if slow-moving, sidewalk-building gets at only part of the problem.

Most of the potential retrofitting happens as part of the natural economic evolution of a city: A business closes, another business buys the building and renovates it, or tears it down and build again. Or a business expands its building.

The city’s passivity is hurting those small-scale opportunities all over town. Here are two examples, both a couple of years old, are the Bank of America branch at Kings Drive and Charlottetowne Avenue (a.k.a. the old Independence Boulevard), and the Bojangles at Third Street and Charlottetowne. Plenty of other examples abound all over the city, especially along the so-called International corridor of Central Avenue, between Eastway Drive and Eastland Mall.

That branch bank and the Bojangles are welcome businesses. I just spent a year in Massachusetts, suffering withdrawal from good fried chicken and biscuits, so believe me, I value Bojangles. The bank replaced one that was demolished for the Little Sugar Creek Greenway and was needed in the neighborhood.

BUT … The two buildings — not the businesses within, but the buildings and lot designs — are awful for the location. They’re suburban in design — one-story buildings with deep setbacks from the street and huge parking lots out front. They’re unsuitable for an in-town location, especially an area where other developers are trying to build more urban patterns. Those two small buildings should have helped with the urban retrofit of Midtown area, yet they didn’t. Why not?

The city’s old-fashioned zoning codes are to blame. Although I often praise the city’s planners for devising a variety of urban codes in the past 10 or 15 years (MUDD, PED, TOD, etc.) those standards apply only to property that holds that zoning. If your property has the older, suburban-style business zoning (B-1 or B-2) you can build suburbia with no trouble from the city. You’re virtually required to, in fact, because of the required setbacks and buffers. You have an economic incentive as well, because going through a rezoning costs money. Keeping your old zoning doesn’t.

Plenty of other examples abound along Central Avenue. Small owners, small buildings, and old zoning codes add up to lost opportunities for small retrofitting steps over time.

If you’re one of the hundreds of people deeply wishing to see a Central Avenue revitalization, you should push the city to change its B-1 zoning standards. I’m getting tired of visionary plans that don’t address this issue. Central Avenue still looks like bedraggled suburbia because the underlying rules that govern building designs haven’t changed under the old zoning that exists along Central Avenue. To change the way things look, change the rules that govern how things look.

(UPDATE as of 7:30 p.m.: Got an e-mail this afternoon that said the city had adopted a PED overlay for Central Avenue. If that’s the case it would do exactly what I’m hoping for — require more urban-style development. But I can’t find it listed on the planning department’s web page. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but means I can’t, tonight, confirm or deny it.)

And before you go off about how the city shouldn’t set design standards, let me just open your eyes to the reality that B-1 zoning, which requires deep setbacks, is less favorable to property owners than a zoning that would allow them to build closer to the property line and cover more of the land with buildings and less with setbacks and buffers. If you’re required to keep 35 feet of property vacant in front, you can’t build as much income-producing square-footage as if you’re required to keep only 15 feet of property vacant in front. I’m not proposing ADDING a lot of design controls, only altering the ones that already exist.