Austin Contrarian

Palin

I was prepping for and then in a hearing all day in Dallas today, so I didn't hear until late that McCain had picked Palin.

My first thought was, "Sure, he's funny, but don't you have to be a U.S. citizen?"

I'll be honest.  I've got real qualms with some of Obama's economic policy proposals.  (I've got real qualms with McCain's economic instincts, which are horrible.  But Congress won't be enacting McCain's bad instincts.)

My Obama-qualm just shrank to a little bitty tiny speck. 

If McCain is so bent on pandering to demographics, then why not pick Condie Rice -- you know, someone who knows something about something?  She might even be able to talk that hothead out of starting a war.

(Sorry for the politics post.  This isn't a politics blog, and I don't intend to turn it into one.  I don't like the horse race.)

Apartment complex mentality

I've written about Zilker's Vertical Mixed Use opt-out application before, mainly to illustrate why Council made a mistake by amending the ordinanceto let neighborhoods gerrymander the VMU districts through opt-out requests.

Zilker's application is scheduled to go to Council on Thursday.  I imagine Council will approve it, perhaps with minor modifications.

The map below depicts Zilker's opt-out application, which the Planning Commission approved with only minor modifications.  Here's the code for your color wheel:  purple = "complete opt out"; yellow = "VMU but with no parking reductions"; light blue = "VMU with all incentives and parking reductions."

Zilker identified a number of concerns -- e.g., iconic business, lack of infrastructure, encroachment on single-family neighborhoods -- to justify its opt-out requests.  But I think one can get the gist quickly enough just by looking at the map:  (1) They are fine with VMU, as long as it is across South Lamar on the land backing up to the railroad track; (2) they will accept VMU on "their" side of South Lamar as long as it is a large parcel that does not intrude into the neighborhood and it doesn't get any parking reductions; and (3) otherwise, no.  (The one exception is to (2), where Zilker approved VMU for the Lamar Plaza/Alamo Drafthouse tract (#51) even though it abuts single--family homes.  Alamo already creates a lot of overflow parking for them, so I'm sure they believe a VMU development without parking reductions might improve the parking.)

I won't rehash my longstanding objections to this practice of gerrymandering VMU districts on busy commercial arterials.  I'll limit myself to two observations:

1.  The "apartment-complex" mentality.  Zilker is still stuck in it.  Vertical Mixed Use developments are supposed to be an alternative to hulking apartment complexes, cut off from the street and sidewalk grids and surrounded by moats of parking.  They are supposed to be a sensitive method for reintegrating commercial and multi-family into traditional neighborhoods.  The Zilker Neighborhood Association has relegated Vertical Mixed Use to large commercial lots isolated from the rest of the neighborhood, at least on the west side of South Lamar.  They have foreclosed the option of small-scale developments; we'll be stuck with the large "pocket" multi-family development.

2.   Protecting iconic businesses.  It's crap, and it's the most offensive part of their application.  Why does the Horseshoe Lounge deserve "iconic" protection while the Saxon Pub does not?  Who says La Feria is more beloved than Maudie's?  Personally, I care a whole lot more about my pharmacy (South Lamar Plaza Drugs), Suzy's Chinese Kitchen, and the Alamo Drafthouse than any of the businesses they've slated for protection.  I didn't get a say because I live on the other side of the street.  (It wouldn't have mattered anyway -- what matters is not how "iconic" they are; what matters is how close they sit to a single-family home.)

For now, my criticism is largely academic.  Zilker has out-waited this building cycle; I doubt there will be any new VMU developments (or significant developments of any other kind) for the next few years until the credit crunch has resolved and the Austin market absorbs the current inventory. But Zilker's VMU map has likely set up some fierce battles when the market recovers.

An unintended consequence of the Stop Domain Subsidies' Charter amendment?

Stop Domain Subsidies' proposed Charter amendment to ban retail subsidies is fraught with unintended consequences.

Here's one:  The Charter amendment likely will shunt low-income residents away from mixed-use developments and into stand-alone residential developments.  Why?  Because the proposed amendment bars subsidies to developments that merely include a retail use, even if the retail use itself receives no subsidy.  The City thus will be unable to "buy down" the affordability of units in mixed-use developments that include a retail use.

A concrete example:

Back in 2006, the City gave Ardent Residential a zoning change to redevelop the Stoneridge Apartments on South Lamar into a 300-unit mixed-use development.  The developer agreed to make 10% of the units affordable at 80% MFI.  But the units being replaced rented for a lot less.  To quell the furor over the rezoning, Betty Dunkerly proposed using some of the City's affordable housing bond money to "buy down" 10% of the units to 50% MFI, a genuinely affordable level.  The developer and the City are squabbling over the "buy down's" price tag, but the City appears ready to honor its pledge.  (It has to spend its $50 million in affordable housing bond money somehow.)

I don't know whether Ardent has filed a site plan yet, but it has talked all along about including retail as part of the mixed use.  That was part of the development's attraction. 

Assuming Ardent still intends to include a retail use, then, the Charter amendment will keep the City from honoring its pledge to buy "deep" affordability for these units.  The Charter amendment will keep the City from buying deep affordability in any mixed-use development that includes retail.  The City will be forced to spend its affordable housing dollars on stand-alone residential developments, or perhaps "live-work" developments.

I don't see how this protects local merchants.  The mixed-use development will still be built, and it will still have retail; the developer simply will rent the units at the market rate (or 80% or 60% of MFI if it takes advantage of the VMU incentives).

One could argue, perhaps, that purchasing affordability in mixed-use developments is an expensive, inefficient way to provide affordable housing.  (I'm ambivalent about it myself.)  But it doesn't seem wise to me to silence that debate by Charter amendment.

Second anniversary

Today is the second anniversary of my first post.  

For the curious, my most-viewed and most-linked entries were the weighted density stuff, thanks to links from Matthew Yglesias, the New Republic blog, Ryan Avent, Environmental Graffiti, the Overhead Wire, and a number of others.

Second and third were one of the Northcross posts and, believe it or not, my piece that started the Hyde Park pedestrian/bicyclist flap.  (I never know what will strike a nerve.)

Now I have an anniversary bleg:  What's the most irritating thing about this blog?  Formatting, length of posts (too long or too short), drab layout. Too much salmonella?  Or, nothing, really, it's just that I'm a jackass?   (I can count on Dahmus not to leave me hanging.)

Big-box experiments

Wendy Waters recounts Costco's attempt to break into the Manhattan market. A coalition of neighborhood activists, labor groups and (almost certainly) local businesses are trying to repel Costco's foray. While their agendas are transparent, the arguments they've trotted out are mostly of the, "It won't work here, so don't try" variety. Wendy does a nice job dissecting them.

I once thought that these fights in far-off cities didn't really affect me. I felt a little schadenfreude, but that was about it.

But now I think differently. And not just because Austin jumped on the bandwagon, or the Northcross Supercenter fight. As Tory Gattis has cogently argued, perhaps the real obstacle to New Urbanist development -- really, the development of a lower-case "u" urban city fabric that can attract a more diverse range of households -- is the lack of large-scale, big-box retail that offers people the variety and bargains they want. One doesn't even have to believe in the virtues of a denser urban environment.  Nor does one have to believe (wrongly) that people will walk or bike to them. No, it's simply a matter of "I want what the suburbanites got, but I don't want to move to the suburbs to get it." The city needs to offer the conveniences of the suburbs.

Costco and Wal-Mart and Home Depot don't know how to build urban stores -- yet. They need to experiment to get it right. They have to learn how to handle parking, how to build up rather than out, how to cater to the slightly different tastes of urban dwellers. They have to learn how to fit a big store in a dense city.

They are trying to experiment.   But they need to experiment in the right places.  Wal-Mart evidently pulled the plug on its Austin experiment, despite beating the neighborhood opposition, because it wasn't confident the urban model would work at Northcross.  It and the other big boxes first need to learn how to build urban stores in truly urban places.  So now, when I hear that San Francisco or Chicago or Manhattan has fought off another big box, I think, "Another experiment squelched before it hit the lab." If Costco or Sam's Club could get enough chances, in enough dense cities, they just might bee able to figure out what works. The cities that ought to be hosting the experiments, unfortunately, have closed the labs.

Photoblogging Guadalupe's parking lots

At the Congress for the New Urbanism in April, Stefanos Polyzoides described Austin's downtown as "scarred."  Austin's downtown is littered with parking lots and parking garages that have turned large swaths into dead space, hostile soil for a lively cityscape. 

I was reminded of Polyzoides's comment the other day driving down Guadalupe.  Guadalupe, one of downtown's principal corridors, has 11 parking lots between 3rd and 13th (and that's generous:  I didn't count two drive-through banks or another parking garage with office space above it).   

View Larger Map

Some glum photos below the jump.

What can we do about it?  Probably nothing (so maybe there's no real point to this entry).  There is only so much demand for retail and residential downtown.  They complement one another so, for now, it's good that they are clumping together along Second Street and Congress Avenue. 

A little hypocritical, no?

One other point on the proposed Charter amendment to ban "financial incentives" for retail developments.   

The proposed amendment language includes this exception to the definition of "Financial Incentives":  

(ii) a grant or loan to a small business, whose principal office is in Austin, Texas, pursuant to a generally applicable local small business loan or grant program[.]

So the Charter amendment being pushed by a coalition of local businesses supposedly opposed to retail subsidies on principle . . . permits subsidies to local businesses.  Subsidies for me, but not for thee? 

Stop the Charter Amendment!

I don't like the Domain incentives, either.  I don't like subsidies for retail.  (But then I don't like subsidies for manufacturing plants or call centers or corporate offices, either.)

True, the city needs to maintain its tax base.  But rebating the taxes from a new development is a piss-poor strategy for maintaining the tax base.  Besides being self-defeating, it forces the rest of us to pay (even if just slightly) higher taxes, potentially displaces other prospective retailers, and encourages prospective retailers to engage in rent-seeking.

A better strategy for the city is to provide good value for the taxes it collects, expand its borders aggressively as necessary, and simplify its labyrinthine permitting process.  (I recall Planning Commissioners questioning the Domain Phase II developers about details like the ground cover around the retention ponds.) 

But the charter amendment being pushed by the Stop the Domain Subsidies folks is a bad, bad idea.  Here's the language that will appear on November's ballot:

Shall the City Charter be amended to prohibit the City from entering into future agreements to provide financial incentives in connection with the development or redevelopment of property that includes one or more retail uses, and to stop the City from providing financial incentives under certain existing agreements in connection with the development or redevelopment of property that includes one or more retail uses?

What does this mean?  It obviously prohibits Council from offering tax rebates to lure new retail.  And I think that's what most supporters of the charter amendment are aiming for.

But the language is awfully broad.  Here are some other things that might fall under the ban [NB: see update below]

• Incentives for mixed-use affordable housing with ground-floor retail uses -- even if the retail would pay market-rate rent and would provide part of the housing subsidy.  The ballot language doesn't ban subsidies to retail; it bans subsidies to developments with retail.  Those aren't the same thing.

• City financing of infrastructure that benefits new developments.  For example, the city indirectly financed the parking garages at the Domain to encourage a mixed-use design.  The amendment proponents presumably would be just as mad if the city had built and paid for the garages directly.  But the city builds infrastructure all the time, and that infrastructure often benefits new and existing developments.  When will new infrastructure be considered a "financial incentive" and when will it be considered run-of-the-mill construction for the public's benefit?  Dunno.  Expect to see that issue litigated.  Repeatedly.  NIMBYs take notice.

• Tax Increment Financing districts (since they almost always have retail uses).  I don't see any other way to read the language.  That's a big deal because that's how the proposed Waller Creek improvements and proposed TOD infrastructure will be financed.  I actually think TIFs are a gimmick; they use accounting sleight of hand to cut  a tax break to the district property owners.  But I'm not so confident about my opinion that I'm willing to cut off debate for now and evermore.

A little humility is a good thing.  Even when we are convinced that our opinions are the right ones, we should be careful about writing them into the charter.  Flexibility is important.  The political process -- elections, grassroot campaigns (like the Stop Domain Subsidies campain) and public debate -- are a better remedy for bad Council decisions.

Important update:  Ah, the risks of not doing your homework.  The actual Charter Amendment language defines "financial incentives" to exempt TIFs and, arguably, infrastructure improvements, although the definition of the latter will leave room for lots of disagreement.  My first example -- city subsidies to affordable mixed-use projects that include retail -- would still be banned, as I read the language.          

New Urbanist NIMBYism

A reminder that NIMBYism really has nothing to do with homeowners' preferences for one kind of development over another.  It's all about managing threats to property values: 

Remember Seaside, the famous New Urbanist development by Andres Duany on the Florida panhandle -- symbol of the new approach to development and community?  Another developer had the idea to create the same thing on a site next door, to be given the unfortunate name Watercolor but to be built according to the very same principles of New Urbanism that made Seaside so successful . . . In keeping with the spirit of connected streets -- versus dead ends and cul-de-sacs -- Watercolor sensibly proposed running its streets right up to the end of Seaside's streets, creating a seamless flow in the fabric and the grid.  But the residents of Seaside wanted nothing to do with the idea.  They didn't want their streets connected with Watercolor's streets.  They were perfectly happy in their isolation, as a stand-alone community that had functioned internally quite well before this unwanted new neighbor came along.  The paragon of density saw its mirror image and was resolute:  not in my backyard.

This from Anthony Flint's This Land:  The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America.

The only way to interpret this sad little anecdote is that the Seaside residents were afraid the new development would dilute the Seaside "brand," and reduce their property values in the process.

Update:  An apparently knowledgeable commenter says it wasn't NIMBYism at all, just that Watercolor wasn't going to be a very good development.

Shaming is a poor substitute for pricing

This morning's Statesman disclosed -- "outed" might be the better word -- Austin's 10 most profligate water users.  Lance Armstrong sits at the top of the list.

I imagine this public shaming will get them to cut down on their water use.  It may also discourage other big users to cut down, too, since they may worry about ending up on the list.  That's far from certain, though.

For someone with a valuable public image like Armstrong, the humiliation of topping the list is more costly than any increase in the price of water.  But I'm sure there are hundreds of people just below the top ten who collectively use 100 or 1000 times as much water as the top 10.  If we priced water properly -- if the top few hundred were paying $3,000-5,000 per month rather than $500 per month -- we could guarantee water reductions while bolstering the city's balance sheet. 

Moral sanctions work best in small communities where people know each other.  Austin is too big for the Scarlet Letter approach to work in the long run.

Update:  Shilli's post at Austinist is better.