Category: Uncategorized

What to do with a big-a– Big Box

Here’s why big box stores, while popular for a time with consumers, are bad for urban neighborhoods in the long term. The new Metropolitan development in Midtown, just over the creek from Uptown, is losing a whopper of a retailer. The Home Depot Expo is closing.

I don’t know yet (though I’m doing some research soon as I file another blog item and write an editorial) who the official property owner is — whether it’s Home Depot, developer Peter A. Pappas or other development partners — but I know there is probably going to be a very big, very empty floorplate at Kings Drive and Charlottetowne Avenue.

That’s one of many reasons big boxes aren’t good for the urban environment — although here I tip my hat to the fact that yes, Big Boxes do bring in Big Sales Tax Revenues (until they close) and, for a time, Big Property Tax Revenues. But all it takes is one big retailer going bankrupt (Circuit City anyone?) or closing stores, and there’s now a giant retail vacancy in a not-very-adaptable building.

Smaller buildings with smaller businesses also see vacancies and businesses failing. But one store closing shop doesn’t affect a space as vast as that Home Depot EXPO Design Center.

A more traditional building can evolve relatively easily into something else. A Big Box needs a Big Tenant. Plus the buildings are usually so shoddily built they look like junk within a decade. Compare the aging boxes on Freedom Drive, Albemarle Road or Independence and Wilkinson boulevards to the aging old stores on North Davidson Street or along Central Avenue near the Plaza.

For now, whaddaya do with the space? Here are my ideas:
Break it into apartments for the homeless?
Cubicles for the job-seekers?
Break it into 1,000 very small offices for bloggers and other entrepreneurs in need of very small spaces at very small rents?
Workshop space for artists? (Not much natural light, unfortunately).
Rehearsal space for local theater, opera and performing groups?
A gigantic indoor farmers and food market, like the one in Florence with cheeses and sausages and plenty of food stands in addition to fruits, vegetables, fish, bakeries, etc. ?

The Obama effect on educational achievement?

In my non-blogging, editorial board job, I write an op-ed column that runs Saturdays. This past Saturday’s (link here) was about Obama’s penmanship (sort of) and speculating whether having an African American in the White House who is unashamed to act intelligent might have a positive, peer-pressure kind of effect, especially but not exclusively, on African American youths.

Guess what? Here’s a link to an NY Times piece on a study that found something very similar.

‘Public hearing’ and private lobbying

During an e-mail exchange that included background data on some proposed changes from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg planning staff to the transit-oriented development requirements, I came across this. It’s from an official with REBIC, the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, which no one should be surprised to learn is opposing some of the changes and trying to get the staff to dial back on them.

I’m not passing judgment here on whether the proposals are good or bad. (Among the changes at issue are some involving parking requirements, and with transit-oriented development parking is a key issue, as you’re dealing with conflicting needs: Trying to encourage people not to drive and trying to encourage walkable environments, yet also trying to help development projects offer enough parking so as not to lose potential tenants and customers.)

But the note sheds light on why some staff proposals seem to start out like icebergs and end up as a half-cup of lukewarm water, before the nondeveloper public gets much of a shot at them. The public hearing isn’t until next week, and the developers’ lobby has been working on this for weeks. One developer even pointed out: “Our best chance to influence is before the public hearing.”

Here’s what REBIC said:

“The public hearing is January 26th.

“The best way to affect [effect] a change is to get staff to see the ‘error of their ways’ prior to the public hearing. The staff responsible for this TA is John Howard and Laura Harmon.

“I will assemble a variety of comments & handle with John & Laura but it will be most effective if you could send your comments to them directly (changes of a few sentences of course). I always like to see how they respond to the various constituencies – to figure out what they are really trying to accomplish & what they are willing to bend the most on.”

Now we live in a democracy, and all interest groups are welcome to weigh in to the process. Charlotte’s development community is skilled at that, and some of nondeveloper groups are also skilled — although they tend to have full-time jobs doing other things. The planning staff is diligent in trying to get public input for most of its proposed changes.

But too many things go on behind the curtain. That isn’t good for public discourse.

And if public hearings are really just for show, can’t they at least offer some popcorn and Cokes to the audience?

Stimulus: $30B for roads, $10B for transit

You’d think $10 billion extra for transit would have people cheering. Not so. The draft stimulus package details, released today, has three times as much money for roads and bridges as for non-automobile transport. And only a puny $1 billion for inter-city rail and an equally puny $1 billion for New Starts, which won’t go far around the country.
The TransportPolitic blog here has a link to the pdf of the bill. This link takes you to a version of today’s release, courtesy of Talking Points Memo.
Will the $30 billion for roads and bridges go for new construction or repairs? Hasn’t been decided yet, apparently.
This TwinCities Streets for People blog notes that another chunk of stimulus money $31 billion, would go to modernize infrastructure with an eye to long-term energy savings, which might well include some transit projects.
Also note that a big chunk of the stimulus ($79 billion) is aimed to help states avoid service cuts, with the majority of that money aimed at education.
LaHood in trouble?
TransportPolitic also had this nifty tidbit about Transportation Secretary-designee Ray LaHood’s background. “Today’s [Wednesday’s] Washington Post broke the devastating news that just last year, Mr. LaHood sponsored $60 million of earmarks, at least $9 million of which went directly to campaign donors. $7.8 million of that money went to Caterpillar, a company from his district. “

(For Charlotte old-timers, the Post’s story was written by former Charlotte-Observerite Carol D. Leonnig, who used to cover Mecklenburg county commissioners before moving to DC to cover, among other things, the Scooter Libby trial.)

How government created suburbia

OK, the headline is a lot broader than this brief posting will be. (And there are links to some interesting reading at the end.)
But please indulge me in a tiny bit more on the suburbia discussion. Several commenters point out, rightly, that Levittown, one of the first large-scale suburban developments, wasn’t a government project but a private one, and that’s right.
However, if you burrow into history, you find that starting in the 1930s, when the government began backing mortgages, its rules specifically encouraged suburbia’s single-family housing and discriminated against urban neighborhoods, especially those with racial or ethnic minorities. In thrall to “modern” planning philosophy, the rules discouraged mixed-use neighborhoods. Banks and other lenders wouldn’t lend in areas that the government discouraged — hence the phenomenon of red-lining, which lasted into the 1970s and 1980s.
None of that means that there isn’t a market for large-lot suburban homes. There is. But that kind of development needs to pay more of its own way. And where were the wails of “socialism” when the government (and private lenders) were actively discriminating against urban neighborhoods, where you couldn’t get a loan to rehab or add on? Read Jane Jacobs. Read Kenneth T. Jackson’s “Crabgrass Frontier.” Etc.
OK, new topic. Three interesting links:
First, a piece about the weird ways traffic works, courtesy of “Jumper.”
Second, a link to a piece in Grist about Charlotte’s transit system, courtesy of reader William Howard. (Grist bills itself as “environmental news and commentary.”
And this month’s Atlantic magazine has a piece from last November’s CNU (Congress for the New Urbanism) conference in Charlotte on transportation.

‘Well-intentioned meddlers’

Thankfully, the state border make[s] it much for (sic) difficult for well-intentioned meddlers like Mary to “save” us by destroying our homes and property values.

That’s from a comment on the previous posting, which linked to “What Will Save the Suburbs,” about whether current suburban development can ever be successfully re-used after today’s incarnations move and change.

My apologies to aforementioned commenter, but come on! How do you think present-day suburbia came to be? It took massive government “meddling.”

The current single-family-only subdivisions would be completely unnatural if we had that mythical “free market.” It takes constant government meddling, in the form of zoning laws and code and zoning inspectors, to keep some folks in those subdivisions from opening nail salons or small coffee shops in those houses, or renting out the bonus room above the garage to a grad student, or splitting their McMansions into quadraplexes and rooming houses to avert foreclosure. It took government “meddling” to create single-use suburbia and meddling is required to maintain it. Just try subdividing your large lot into three smaller ones and putting some apartments on one of the lots. Better yet, just try taking your lot in Morrocroft neighborhood near SouthPark and building high-rise condos – which you almost certainly could sell, or could have until last year.

One huge reason suburbia is hard to convert is because it was built under government rules that didn’t allow mixing uses. So there are no stores inside single-family home subdivisions, and no apartment buildings or condo buildings either. Other government rules have mandated a certain number of parking places for businesses, hence the big asphalt oceans left behind when the big boxes bail out or go belly-up.

Sure, some of suburbia is built by choice – mostly by people who learned to tailor their development techniques to match what the zoning laws required, and now they’d just as soon not have to re-learn new techniques if the old ones are A.) Legal and B.) Making money.

Suburbia is just as much a product of government intervention as the newer, mixed-use and transit-oriented developments. Different rules, yes, but rules just the same.

What will save the suburbs?

About four different readers pointed me to this intriguing blog posting at the New York Times by Allison Arieff, “What Will Save the Suburbs?”

I hope all our city council members, city staff, county commissioners, planning commissioners take time to read it. Arieff points out that unlike the development of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the postwar suburbia is going to be difficult to re-purpose (ugh, horrible word). Yet in Charlotte, you can still build a three-houses-per-acre single-family subdivision without any City Council rezoning needed — auto-pilot growth .

Empty big-box stores are just one of the problems. (I wonder if the book she cites, Julia Christensen’s “Big Box Reuse” mentions that one old K mart in Charlotte was reused as a charter school.)

The difficulty of re-purposing development that was badly designed to start with is one major hurdle for attracting any serious uptown retail: There simply aren’t enough good sidewalk-front spaces clumped together to attract enough stores. After all, retail loves to be near other retail. (See “shopping centers.”) If you don’t understand what I mean about good sidewalk-front spaces, take a field trip to downtown Asheville.
Maybe this development downturn will inspire the city of Charlotte to finally look with purpose at the kind of by-right development (meaning no rezoning needed) it’s allowing.

Did developers slow naming of CDOT director?

Let’s see, Charlotte Transportation Director Jim Humphrey left in late 2007. So why did it take until 2009 for the city to name a replacement? Today City Manager Curt Walton announced he was promoting Interim Director Danny Pleasant, who came to CDOT as deputy director in 2002.

A good source tells me one reason for the delay was nervousness in the development community about Pleasant, whose initiatives in the department have pushed the envelope for good community design. Apparently City Manager Curt Walton was able to get the City Council members comfortable with Pleasant as CDOT director.

As deputy director, he oversaw transportation planning that is putting more emphasis on walkable streets, bicycling paths, connectivity. One of his responsibilities was the six-years-in-the-making effort to rewrite the design guidelines under which streets widths and sidewalk widths and other such essential rules are written. Those urban street design guidelines came under criticism from the development community who didn’t like the requirements for wider planting strips, required street trees and shorter block lengths.

Pleasant has a master’s in urban planning, is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, the American Institute of Certified Planners and a fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Calif. city manager: Scrap zoning

Rick Cole writes that zoning codes are the problem, not the solution, in the effort to build and maintain great cities. He writes:

“The American Dream” of single-family tracts, shopping centers and business parks owes more to zoning mandates than to market economics. Zoning was imposed on the American landscape by an unholy alliance between Utopians preaching a “modern” way of life and hard-headed businessmen who profited from supplying that new model, including an auto industry steeped in the ideology that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.”

Cole is a former mayor of Pasadena, Calif., and now city manager in Ventura, Calif. Instead of zoning, he says, use “codes” — something more and more municipalities are doing. Then he has a good analysis of the terminology of “form-based-codes” (a cumbersome term that addresses the how, but not the why you’d have one) vs. “smart codes” (a term that’s been adopted by lots of developers whose projects were anything but smart).

A number of smaller municipalities in this region have adopted codes that are akin to the form-based code. Charlotte isn’t one of them.