New look at old problem: Paying for transportation

RED WING, Minn. – Planning consultant Scott Polikov from Fort Worth, Texas, has an idea that needs a bigger audience. It's about how you find money to build transit systems. That's a problem Charlotte is facing, along with dozens of other U.S. cities. Based on his thinking it's something Charlotte has possibly mismanaged, along with many other places.

The key understanding is that building a transit system (or any transportation system, whether it's highways or canals) creates huge profits for real estate interests. Example: A transit authority will announce it's building a line, and where the stations will be. Then it will go out and buy right of way, often through eminent domain, along that planned route, paying now-higher land prices, since the building of the line will make that land worth more.

"In Europe, the landowner pays for the right to have the station," he said.

Why shouldn't the government (that is, all of us, since we are the government) capture some of the value that it's creating (that we're creating) by building that infrastructure?

Indeed, in the pre-crash era there were developers who were seriously thinking about putting up millions to build Charlotte's proposed commuter rail transit lines, because they knew it would make their development significantly more valuable. The same was true for the Triangle Transit proposed transit line.

Sometime, credit for real estate development will re-emerge. When that happens, why shouldn't the Charlotte Area Transit System, for instance, auction off the development rights at the transit stations? And then use that money as a revenue stream? (Yeah, yeah there are a lot of legal issues involved, not to mention political ones.)

Consider how development has occurred along the Lynx light rail line through South End. The line was fixed. In an understandable effort to lure transit-oriented development at the station areas, the city has doggedly gone in and pro-actively up-zoned land to the TOD zoning – thereby giving away huge land value to the property owners. It also gave away any real power the city planners might have had to force better urban design onto that TOD development. If you're already allowed by right to do your TOD, why should you listen to the city's request that you do something different – for instance, including some affordable housing units?

(I'm at a yearly conference among people affiliated with the Citistates Associates, a loose coalition of planners, economists, think-tankers, current and former elected officials, Chamber of Commerce execs, etc., who share an interest in metro region growth issues.)

Politics vs. planning

I've had this bit in my notebook for a week, and finally have time to write about it:

Mayor Pat McCrory was right – but wrong – at last week's City Council meeting (March 9) when he badgered a planner about why planners removed a street connection from the Arrowood Transit Station Area plan.

He was right to question it and to say city planners should give their best professional planning judgment, not bow to political pressure. (At least, that's what I think he was trying to point out. And I must note that many elected officials get similarly huffy when planners act oblivious to political reality. But I digress...)

But McCrory shouldn't have hectored planner Alberto Gonzalez, who was presenting the plan.
In fact, Gonzalez ended up fainting or passing out – apparently because he hadn't eaten for some time – which made the scene even more dramatic.

The staff had originally proposed a street connection from Sharon Lakes Road to Hill Road. But neighbors in Starmount didn't like that idea. (See my Feb. 28 column, "Aiming at where the future will be," about connectivity.)

So, Gonzalez told the council, "We went back and took a closer look." And they deleted that street connection. Their thinking, he said, was that such connections are made when property is developed or redeveloped, and since the property in question was relatively newly developed, it wasn't realistic to think it would be redeveloped again any time in the near future.

McCrory wouldn't let him off the hook. He said, in essence, "Your job is to give us the planning perspective, not make judgments about what will or won't fly politically." So, he continued, was your recommendation during the public hearing incorrect? The poor planner was going to have to say, "Yes, we were wrong," or "Yes, we caved politically." I can't remember at what point he blacked out. It might have been right about then.

Warren Cooksey hopped into the discussion to note that the plan should probably have the connections that planners think are needed, because a redevelopment might occur even if it is, today, deemed unlikely, and you'd want that street connection to be in the plan.

The upshot: The City Council adopted the plan with only Cooksey voting against. The mayor doesn't have a vote on those matters. Here's a link that will let you look at the Draft Plan and the revisions. The original street connection proposed is on Page 13 of the Draft Plan.

The candy bar approach to city planning

Thank you, anonymous commenter from 5:20 p.m. Tuesday. I am not against density or height. I am against height in the wrong place. You can make a case that next door to the Arlington is an appropriate spot for density, and I won't get in your face about it, although I think the proximity to the Dilworth Historic District makes it problematic, for reasons I've mentioned before. Overall, I tend to agree with Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, who says that six five-story buildings are better than one 30-story building.

But here's the crux of my objections to the South End rezoning: The whole point of a small station area plan is to plan what heights and densities are appropriate on which spots. If the planners who wrote the South End Station Area Plan and the City Council who adopted it in 2005 believed that site was appropriate for buildings twice the height of the rest of the area's height limit, why not have the plan say that? Why limit the appropriate height there, in the plan, to 120 feet? Those kinds of issues are precisely why your tax money pays for planners and why your elected representatives adopt small area plans.

Why even bother with any plan if it's routinely disregarded?

It reminds me of taking a kid to the grocery store. You say before you go, "I'm not buying you candy in the check-out line." If you then buy the kid a Snickers in the check-out line, that kid will cry for candy on every visit to the store for the next 20 years. And you will have undermined any credibility your authority might have had.

One last thing, responding to a commenter on the post about the Piedmont Town Center project: I LOVE Filene's Basement. Offer one of those up and I'll be out there with my chainsaw. (Joke, people, joke.)

South End tower wins swift OK

Reporting live, from City Council:
(See previous post, also from council meeting, about a first -- a developer urging council to reject his own rezoning petition.)

The City Council launched the vote-on-rezonings part of its meeting at roughly 6:25 p.m. By 6:39 p.m. it had finished its rezoning decisions. They ripped through 18 rezonings, all except one of them approved unanimously with no discussion on any, except for about 30 seconds on the one that was approved 7-2 (for a day care center at The Plaza and Barrington Drive).

That proposal to allow a 250-foot high-rise tower in South End? The one that was in violation of the South End Transit Station Area Plan, which set a 120-foot height maximum? I didn't have a stopwatch, so I couldn't tell you whether it was 5 seconds or 10, but there was no discussion, nothing. Unanimous approval, and on to the next agenda item.

Sure, the council's rezoning meetings can drag. The public hearing part of the meeting tends to bring out developers and neighborhood opponents. It's 7:34 p.m. and they're just on No. 6 in a 15-item public hearing agenda. And council member Michael Barnes just pointed out that there have been numerous violations of the Northeast District Plan in recent years. So why didn't he -- or anyone else -- think it was worth maybe a little public discussion about why they were violating the South End station area plan, adopted in 2005?

Maybe there were good reasons. Maybe the 120-foot maximum height limit adopted as part of the Transit Station Area Principles isn't a good idea after all. You, the voting public, have no way to know why the council members decided to treat their own adopted plans as virtually irrelevant.

They're on auto-pilot. The biggest issue facing the city for decades has been growth and how to deal with it and pay for its impacts. You'd like to think your elected officials are thoughtfully debating the pros and cons of different growth proposals. Guess what. I'm watching them tonight, and it's pretty hard not to conclude they've abdicated that responsibility.

Transit's threat to NoDa

How to route the to-be-built northeast light rail line? CATS officials are pondering that question. Read about it in this story from Sunday's Observer, from The City section. If you want a public voice, there's a hearing Tuesday 6-8 p.m. in the fellowship hall at Sugaw (not Sugar) Creek Presbyterian Church, at North Tryon Street and Sugar Creek Road.

I was hoping CATS would route the northeast corridor up North Tryon Street instead of the railroad corridor that parallels North Davidson Street. Apparently that's not to be, at least between uptown and NoDa. CATS is still considering whether to put a section of the line along North Tryon between Sugar Creek Road and Eastway Drive. North of Eastway, the route follows North Tryon Street.

I'm very worried about the NoDa business district being beset by the same forces that are hitting South End and threatening the Dilworth historic district and its bungalows. Except the NoDa retail area is closer to the rail line than much of Dilworth, and NoDa's business district has a better preserved "Main Street"-type feel to it than anything that was in Dilworth. That's all at huge risk, because the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) zoning that applies to transit station areas allows high-rise buildings of up to 120 feet -- or higher if your developer asks for an exemption.

The way land values work, if zoning allows high rise buildings on your land and there's a strong economic market, eventually you're likely to have high rises there. Say so long to the Center of the Earth Gallery building, the Evening Muse building, the Neighborhood Theatre building, and say hello to more brutalist modern towers like the reviled, pink Arlington.

Even more threatening to NoDa is that it lacks even the protection Dilworth has as a historic district. NoDa isn't a local historic district, which requires new development to blend in with the old. Being a historic district hasn't prevented the bulldozing of some bungalows or the ballooning of others into wannabe McMansions twice the size of the original house. But it's much better than no protection at all.

If NoDa's main street were to avoid TOD zoning because the rail stop was put up on North Tryon, then you wouldn't have those sky high, I-can-build-a-tower land values wreaking quite as much havoc on NoDa's business district. The super-intense development would instead be a half mile north on North Tryon Street, which heaven knows could use TOD's better urban design rules as well as stronger economic sizzle. Some South End-style development there would be a very good thing.

In the middle of NoDa, those transit-oriented high-rise buildings would merely kill the special place that has grown up naturally along North Davidson and 36th streets.

One solution would be for the city to craft a more historic-preservation option for TOD, capping heights at three or four stories. Sadly, given the grip developers have on the development-loving city officials, that's about as likely to happen as I am to be picked as the vice presidential candidate for John McCain or Barack Obama.