[quoteWhen some people are in office too long, they start to act as if they are King and Queen of the wards and constituents they serve. And unfortunately, some of their poor and short-sighted decision-making becomes a problem for the city at-large ------Roddy, Bosley, Sr. etc. etc. As they get old, sometimes their perspectives get old with them.
Send them packing after two four year terms. Maybe some Republicans and Independents could get a seat at the table for once.
][/quote]
Ouch Rick--that's a harsh.
It’s very time consuming to provide thoughtful responses to what are in many cases valid criticisms, or at least debatable issues on the projects in the 17th ward, and with nearly half the development in the city occurring in my ward, I’m afraid I’d be on here all day if I responded to each of them. I did want to respond to this topic, because I think it is so important that as the new Chair of the HUDZ committee, I have recently announced a citywide review of tax incentives.
Tax abatement “typically” provides just 5-10% of project costs, and TIF’s 10-15%, and yet these are just a few of the more obvious goals: maximize revenue for the city, maximize revenue for the school system, minimize environmental footprint, preserve historic buildings, increase neighborhood property values, increase density, provide parking, assure quality construction materials and design, assure good urban planning/form, remove blight, include minority and women, pay prevailing wage, pursue new construction irrespective of everything else, and keep the voters happy.
These are not congruent goals and are in many cases conflicting. While some of these might seem silly to you, as someone who has sponsored several $Billion of redevelopment legislation (probably more than anyone one else in the region—except maybe Ald Young), I can tell you there are strong advocates for all of these objectives, and nothing happens at the Board of Aldermen without 15 votes.
With my review of tax incentives I “hope” to build tools that will help us better quantify the opportunity costs and benefits with proposals and a method of prioritizing our objectives. This is going to be difficult to get consensus on the board, as each Alderman is used to making their own decisions. Just coming up with the metrics will be hard-- the city let go its financial analysts years ago, along with most of its planning department. As an example, I have read that over 20% or city assessed property value is exempt from taxes and another 15% is abated, but I have not been able to get this verified much less broken out by category. I hope that in a few months we can begin getting the data organized well enough to share it with the community at large and then have committee testimony and provide people like you the opportunity to comment.
Even with good data and set priorities, the decision making is still very subjective and will be subject to situational issues. As an example, I/we (PCD) caved on the requirement of Sarah retail frontage for the West Pine Loft project. The developer called it a deal breaker. The existing owner told us if it didn’t happen with this developer, he would seek a long term lease with a warehouse user to cover his debt service. Not an idle threat, because it happened about ten years ago with the same property. If that tenant didn’t go bankrupt, it had options for 20 years. I/PCD are going to be much more flexible in our negotiations on that project than we would be on the Optimist building. We want to connect the CWE to the SLU campus and need that block done. Having a butler building warehouse on Sarah would have made it far more difficult.
Until /if something meaningful comes from my committee’s work, almost all projects in my ward will continue to flow through Cortex or through the committee system I created at PCD.
With regard to PCD, because I am “giving away money” with development legislation, I wanted to create transparency in the decision process by having a group of people rooted with my residents so they can ring the alarm on me if I abuse the system. Additionally they have diverse skill sets (mostly real estate related), are provided with more information than is typically available to the public (real estate is one of the exceptions to the sunshine rules) and they know the history and situational issues of projects in their neighborhood. We communicate frequently and we/they have many of the same debates as occur on this website. While I don’t always completely agree with the outcomes, I agree with them enough and respect the committee members efforts and this process enough that it is going to be a rare occurrence for me to void their decision.
Between Cortex and PCD, I don’t know of any part of the region that has a more talented and thoughtful group of people reviewing development projects, and I think that is at least one of the factors that is contributing to the growth in the 17th ward.
With regard to the Optimist project, I can’t speak for PCD’s committee, but my views regarding incentives have evolved over time and they continue to evolve. In large part this happened because my neighborhoods have changed. For many years, of the goals I listed above, my primary goal was to grow property values and create an environment where market value exceeds development costs. In other words, development would occur without incentives.
Today, the 17th ward enjoys some of the highest sq ft values in the region and while there is still work that needs to be done, I need to begin thinking about my wards role and responsibility to the rest of the city. Creating high prices in my ward creates a ripple effect in the neighborhoods around it and a umbrella under which market rate development can occur in other neighborhoods. In many ways the Optimist project does little other than create supply and absorb demand which in turn increases the elasticity of price (for us finance geeks we want our demand at the point of at least unitary elasticity or for the math folks that the point on the demand curve where the derivative is equal to one, or tangent line has a slope of 1). In simple terms we don’t want to create a glut. There is housing for about 7500 in the 240 acres of the 17th ward that are in the CWE and there is “announced” housing being created for about 1500 or 20% more (including Opus’ project across the street in 28).
The Optimist project doesn’t create demand by pushing the envelope like the Park East Tower, nor does it create demand by providing neighborhood amenities like Mills or Opus’ 28th ward project which both include parking and retail. It doesn’t remove blight and there is no situational urgency like the Hallmark property.
What it might do by absorbing demand is undermine prices and make it more difficult to get financing for yet to be made public projects that do some of the things listed above.
I haven’t commented more on this site about the Pevely demolition because there are some non public issues that need to be resolved, I don’t know what SLU’s new administration intentions are, and I don’t have time to compose a thoughtful response that might be moot, but I do think there is value to compare Pevely to the Optimist project.
I supported the demolition of the Pevely Building , which was vacant, declared historic by its developer so it could receive tax credits “in addition” to local incentives. In the process, part of the building burns down and the developer who was very experienced in historic rehab abandons the project. SLU, an institutional partner of Cortex, wants to create a development that would create jobs and is consistent in use to what has been discussed for years, although never codified in an ordinance, as Cortex’s Southern node. That proposal received tremendous opposition.
In the case of the Optimist, we would be subsidizing the demolition of an “occupied “ historic building for an apartment building that doesn’t create jobs.
Finally, let me make this offer--I don’t know how Urbanstl is organized or who organizes it, and I don’t have time to provide detailed responses to all criticisms of the project in my ward. What time I do have to explain decisions I try to spend on communicating with residents of my ward and I don’t know how many are on here. I do enjoy discussing redevelopment issues and learn from the interchange. Here’s my offer—if the organizers of the site ever want to schedule a real, not virtual, event to discuss or argue about projects in my ward—I’ll be glad to attend and I’ll even buy the first round.
Send them packing after two four year terms. Maybe some Republicans and Independents could get a seat at the table for once.
][/quote]
Ouch Rick--that's a harsh.
It’s very time consuming to provide thoughtful responses to what are in many cases valid criticisms, or at least debatable issues on the projects in the 17th ward, and with nearly half the development in the city occurring in my ward, I’m afraid I’d be on here all day if I responded to each of them. I did want to respond to this topic, because I think it is so important that as the new Chair of the HUDZ committee, I have recently announced a citywide review of tax incentives.
Tax abatement “typically” provides just 5-10% of project costs, and TIF’s 10-15%, and yet these are just a few of the more obvious goals: maximize revenue for the city, maximize revenue for the school system, minimize environmental footprint, preserve historic buildings, increase neighborhood property values, increase density, provide parking, assure quality construction materials and design, assure good urban planning/form, remove blight, include minority and women, pay prevailing wage, pursue new construction irrespective of everything else, and keep the voters happy.
These are not congruent goals and are in many cases conflicting. While some of these might seem silly to you, as someone who has sponsored several $Billion of redevelopment legislation (probably more than anyone one else in the region—except maybe Ald Young), I can tell you there are strong advocates for all of these objectives, and nothing happens at the Board of Aldermen without 15 votes.
With my review of tax incentives I “hope” to build tools that will help us better quantify the opportunity costs and benefits with proposals and a method of prioritizing our objectives. This is going to be difficult to get consensus on the board, as each Alderman is used to making their own decisions. Just coming up with the metrics will be hard-- the city let go its financial analysts years ago, along with most of its planning department. As an example, I have read that over 20% or city assessed property value is exempt from taxes and another 15% is abated, but I have not been able to get this verified much less broken out by category. I hope that in a few months we can begin getting the data organized well enough to share it with the community at large and then have committee testimony and provide people like you the opportunity to comment.
Even with good data and set priorities, the decision making is still very subjective and will be subject to situational issues. As an example, I/we (PCD) caved on the requirement of Sarah retail frontage for the West Pine Loft project. The developer called it a deal breaker. The existing owner told us if it didn’t happen with this developer, he would seek a long term lease with a warehouse user to cover his debt service. Not an idle threat, because it happened about ten years ago with the same property. If that tenant didn’t go bankrupt, it had options for 20 years. I/PCD are going to be much more flexible in our negotiations on that project than we would be on the Optimist building. We want to connect the CWE to the SLU campus and need that block done. Having a butler building warehouse on Sarah would have made it far more difficult.
Until /if something meaningful comes from my committee’s work, almost all projects in my ward will continue to flow through Cortex or through the committee system I created at PCD.
With regard to PCD, because I am “giving away money” with development legislation, I wanted to create transparency in the decision process by having a group of people rooted with my residents so they can ring the alarm on me if I abuse the system. Additionally they have diverse skill sets (mostly real estate related), are provided with more information than is typically available to the public (real estate is one of the exceptions to the sunshine rules) and they know the history and situational issues of projects in their neighborhood. We communicate frequently and we/they have many of the same debates as occur on this website. While I don’t always completely agree with the outcomes, I agree with them enough and respect the committee members efforts and this process enough that it is going to be a rare occurrence for me to void their decision.
Between Cortex and PCD, I don’t know of any part of the region that has a more talented and thoughtful group of people reviewing development projects, and I think that is at least one of the factors that is contributing to the growth in the 17th ward.
With regard to the Optimist project, I can’t speak for PCD’s committee, but my views regarding incentives have evolved over time and they continue to evolve. In large part this happened because my neighborhoods have changed. For many years, of the goals I listed above, my primary goal was to grow property values and create an environment where market value exceeds development costs. In other words, development would occur without incentives.
Today, the 17th ward enjoys some of the highest sq ft values in the region and while there is still work that needs to be done, I need to begin thinking about my wards role and responsibility to the rest of the city. Creating high prices in my ward creates a ripple effect in the neighborhoods around it and a umbrella under which market rate development can occur in other neighborhoods. In many ways the Optimist project does little other than create supply and absorb demand which in turn increases the elasticity of price (for us finance geeks we want our demand at the point of at least unitary elasticity or for the math folks that the point on the demand curve where the derivative is equal to one, or tangent line has a slope of 1). In simple terms we don’t want to create a glut. There is housing for about 7500 in the 240 acres of the 17th ward that are in the CWE and there is “announced” housing being created for about 1500 or 20% more (including Opus’ project across the street in 28).
The Optimist project doesn’t create demand by pushing the envelope like the Park East Tower, nor does it create demand by providing neighborhood amenities like Mills or Opus’ 28th ward project which both include parking and retail. It doesn’t remove blight and there is no situational urgency like the Hallmark property.
What it might do by absorbing demand is undermine prices and make it more difficult to get financing for yet to be made public projects that do some of the things listed above.
I haven’t commented more on this site about the Pevely demolition because there are some non public issues that need to be resolved, I don’t know what SLU’s new administration intentions are, and I don’t have time to compose a thoughtful response that might be moot, but I do think there is value to compare Pevely to the Optimist project.
I supported the demolition of the Pevely Building , which was vacant, declared historic by its developer so it could receive tax credits “in addition” to local incentives. In the process, part of the building burns down and the developer who was very experienced in historic rehab abandons the project. SLU, an institutional partner of Cortex, wants to create a development that would create jobs and is consistent in use to what has been discussed for years, although never codified in an ordinance, as Cortex’s Southern node. That proposal received tremendous opposition.
In the case of the Optimist, we would be subsidizing the demolition of an “occupied “ historic building for an apartment building that doesn’t create jobs.
Finally, let me make this offer--I don’t know how Urbanstl is organized or who organizes it, and I don’t have time to provide detailed responses to all criticisms of the project in my ward. What time I do have to explain decisions I try to spend on communicating with residents of my ward and I don’t know how many are on here. I do enjoy discussing redevelopment issues and learn from the interchange. Here’s my offer—if the organizers of the site ever want to schedule a real, not virtual, event to discuss or argue about projects in my ward—I’ll be glad to attend and I’ll even buy the first round.
