on common ground: summer 2005

2 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2005

When the Smart Growth discussion began in the mid-1990s among citizens, publicofficials and planners, the primary focus was on managing growth at the urbanfringe. The conversion of large amounts of farm and forest land to low-density

development was a major concern then, as it remains today. But over the past few years, ithas become more widely recognized that the revitalization of existing communities is also avital element of Smart Growth, and maybe a more fruitful arena for focused attention.

Smart GrowthRevitalizationmeets

There are obvious advantages to developing inexisting communities — infrastructure is alreadyin place, and meeting growth demand with infilland redevelopment could help reduce the gob-bling-up of open countryside. But targeting oldercommunities for growth and investment also offersgreat opportunities for improvement. These com-munities have experienced decades of disinvest-ment and often provide little in the way of retailservices that are taken for granted in the newersuburbs. Growth — new housing and commercialdevelopment — can be used to complete theseneighborhoods by offering a wider range of hous-ing opportunities and by creating mixed-use walk-able neighborhoods that meet an increasingmarket demand.

We have tracked the increasing interestin walkable, mixed-use communities in theSmart Growth surveys undertaken by NARas well as the surveys of others.Increasingly, consumers are saying theywant to walk to destinations such as shopsand restaurants, and they are willing to livein higher-density housing in order toachieve this lifestyle. Last year, 12 percentof all existing home sales in the countrywere condos, and condos appreciated morein percent of value than detached houses.As articles in this issue of On CommonGround illustrate, this demand is being metwith new housing and retail development inthe downtowns of cities large and small, inolder suburbs that are creating new mixed-use downtowns, and in smaller Main Street towns.

Make no mistake, the predominant develop-ment pattern continues to be low-density subur-

ban expansion, andSmart Growth pro-ponents still need tofocus energies andbudgets on preserv-ing open space andimproving the plan-ning models for newsuburban and exur-ban development.But investing in andstrengthening older

communities is a winning Smart Growth strategyfor creating better neighborhoods and a widerrange of housing options.

For more information on NAR and Smart Growth, go to www.realtor.org/smartgrowth.

On Common Ground is published twice a year by the Government Affairs office of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (NAR), and is distributed free of charge. The publication presents a widerange of views on Smart Growth issues, with the goal of encouraging a dialogue among REALTORS®, elect-ed officials and other interested citizens. The opinions expressed in On Common Ground are those of theauthors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, its members or affiliate organizations.

Editor: Joseph R. Molinaro, Manager, Smart Growth ProgramsNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

500 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20001

Distribution: For more copies of this issue or to be placed on our mailing list for future issues of On Common Ground, please contact Ted Wright, NAR Government Affairs, at (202) 383-1206 or [email protected].

SUMMER 2005 ON COMMON GROUND 3


16The Code Word Is Smart

28Attractions of

the Small Town

58All Aboard!

New Life in the Old Burbs

52

Summer 20056 New Downtown Housing

Not just the biggest cities.by Martin Zimmerman

10 If You Rebuild, Will They Come?The revitalization of Main Street.by Brad Broberg

16 The Code Word is Smart GrowthBuilding codes are reflecting the demand for revamping older structures.by John Van Gieson

22 What Was Once Old Is Now NewTransforming greyfield sites intonew communities.by Jason Miller

28 Attractions of the Small Townby Brad Broberg

32 No VacanciesCities struggle to reclaim abandoned properties.by Jason Miller

38 Smart Growth Redo of Mid-Size Citiesby Heidi Johnson-Wright

44 Commercial Comebacksby David Goldberg

52 New Life in the Old BurbsDiverse home buyers are reviv-ing older, inner-ring suburbs.by Steve Wright

58 All Aboard!Streetcars lead the way to Neighborhood Reinvestment.by Christine Jordan Sexton

64 Smart Growth in the States

If You Rebuild,Will They Come?

10

On Common Ground

22What Was OnceOld Is Now New

On Common Ground thanks the following contributors and organizations for photographs, illustrations and artist ren-derings reprinted in this issue: Baltimore County Office of Communications, Boulevard Centro, Payton Chung, City ofNorth Miami, Congress for the New Urbanism, Continuum Partners LLC, Kay Dannen of Shiels Obletz Johnson, Inc.,Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., Alan Feinberg of Central Maryland Development, Inc., Flaherty and Collins Properties, JillFreeman, Francesca Gambetti, Shiels Obletz Johnsen, Inc., Val Giannettino of Downtown Partners Inc. in Burlington,Iowa, Leslie Grower of Center City Commission, Emily Hall of Durkee, Brown, Viveiros & Werenfels Architects,Hillsborough Area Transit Authority, Hoyt Street Properties, Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, LittletonMain Street, Inc., Alex MacLean, Rich McLaughlin, Ed McMahon, Urban Land Institute, Metro 2005, Darrell Moore,Myhre Group Architects 2004, Novare Group, Steve Rosenthal, Joe Schilling, Patricia Shetley of Patricia Shetley andAssociates, Inc., Michael Stevens, DC Marketing Center, Douglas S. Storrs of Cornish Associates, LP, ToldDevelopment Company, Unity Council, Beth Van Der Jagt of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects and Wisconsin Departmentof Tourism.


he UpsurgeTo the relief and surprise of those whosavor an urban lifestyle, the housing

boom which has flourished in and near down-towns over the past decade shows no signs ofabating. Equally unexpected is that this boomis common to cities of widely varying sizesand in all regions of the country. In cities withan industrial legacy, converted warehouseswithin easy walking distance of downtownsare attracting the young, affluent professionalmarket. Hip and artsy districts are taking rootwith names like SoMa, Lodo, SoDo andDUMBO…all derived from Manhattan’s castiron Soho district where it all began. Let’s callthis Type I.

Type II is characterized by the constructionof new housing on close-in open sites. Type IIIis associated with the conversion of vacant butarchitecturally notable buildings such asdepartment stores or office buildings. Type IVfocuses on new infill projects. Type V has justbegun to emerge in some of the bigger citiesand consists of new luxurious high-rise con-dos planned for the over privileged.

And what of the loft? Its popularity is sopervasive that it is being replicated in thethree other types of buildings…and with noapologies to Soho.


housingNot just the biggest cities

By Martin Zimmerman

downtown

T

Charlotte, N.C.

new


The DeterminantsHowever, to truly contribute to an urban lifestyle, downtown housing

depends on a support system, i.e. a set of determinants. Based upon astudy by the Brookings Institution, these are listed as follows:

• Downtown political and business leadership must be pro-housing. • City financial subsidies must be allocated to housing.• Zoning must mandate high-density housing in conformance with

compact, coherent districts based on the New Urbanist model. • Downtowns must express a rich blend of old and new architecture.• Downtowns must slow down the auto, minimize parking and give

the pedestrian and cyclist priority.• Downtowns need to encourage and tolerate pedestrian-intensive

activities such as farmer’s markets, street theatre, political leaflet-ing and sidewalk vendors. This means the kind of spontaneousinteraction that is impossible in the suburban malls.

• Downtowns must be clean and safe. • Neighborhoods bordering downtowns should be attractive with

unhampered access to downtowns by foot, car or bicycle. • A downtown management entity must coordinate the affairs of the

various facets of a downtown.

Springfield, MO Downtown Springfield sits within a city of 150,000, including two uni-

versities located a few minutes away. Throughout the 1980s and early90s, downtown remained a fraction of its former size, the only evidenceof housing being a few makeshift lofts and rooming houses. Thingsbegan to change in 1998 when a maverick developer bought a vacantbuilding and converted it to five lofts. Over the next two years another55 units were added and a local business pumped $3.2 million into astart-up brew pub. Soon other pubs and restaurants sprouted, a nonprofit

Community Development Corporation (CDC) was formed, a downtownplan was prepared and 13 banks pooled money for gap financing. All ofthis set the stage for the real housing surge. In the last three years anoth-er 166 units have been built, 60 are currently under construction and 86are planned. This raises the total to just under 400. Rents have remainedaffordable in the $600-$1,200 range. In Springfield, virtually all of thehousing is Type III — adaptive reuse of older buildings.

“In bigger cities, inserting three- or four-hundred housing units ofhousing in the downtown does not make much impact. In Springfield ithas had a major impact,” says John Simmons, director of the UrbanDistrict Alliance.

Charlotte, NCUnlike other cities which stood helpless while businesses fled,

Charlotte, in keeping with its corporate ethos, fought back with avengeance during the 1970s and 80s. Such zeal came at a price asnumerous historic structures fell to the wrecking ball, and the BrooklynAfrican-American community was leveled to make way for a sterile gov-ernment center.

Downtowns need to encourage and tolerate pedestrian-intensive activities.

By the 1990s a consolidation and redirectiontook place consistent with the determinants statedabove, and several blockbuster projects were built.Foremost among these was the Nations Bank head-quarters, a centerpiece for uptown (as referred to inCharlotte) which combined an elegant 60-storytower with a home for the Charlotte Symphony.Meanwhile, residential population remained staticat 3000 units.

In 1998 the housing upsurge began with a num-ber of different projects moving forward simultane-ously. The heaviest concentrations occurred in twoprojects — Hope VI and Gateway Village. In addi-tion to replacing deteriorated public housing, the

Hope VI effort mixed race, income and housingtypes to create a model neighborhood of 750 resi-dences, now called the Garden District. Buildingsetbacks, architectural scale and street presencewere all conceived in accordance with NewUrbanist principles. The Gateway mixed-use proj-ect combined 699 units of mid-rise housing with aBank of America office facility and a New Urbancampus for Johnson and Wales University.

As a result, residential units increased in uptownfrom 3,000 in 1995 to 9,500 in 2005. In the past 10months developers have unveiled plans for eighthigh-rises, including one that will soar to 56 stories.It looks like a goal of 12,000 by 2007 is within reach.

Other CitiesBirmingham, Alabama – By 1998 this city had

added 14 apartment buildings with six moreplanned. Initially rentals, there has been a shift toa 45-percent ownership level. Developers also

have been working towards conver-sion of the John Hand building, oneof Birmingham’s first skyscrapers,into a mixed-use facility with a bank,residences, offices and a health club.

Memphis, Tennessee – The cre-ation of downtown housing inMemphis has been a mix of largeand small projects. Mud Island, anongoing effort which straddles thedowntown zone, has grown to 2,600housing units since the late 1980s,of which 75 percent are apartments.As of 2003 plans were afoot foranother large undertaking mixingHope VI subsidized units with mar-ket-rate units. Financing was beingarranged through HUD ($35 mil-lion), City of Memphis ($18.1 mil-lion), private equity and loans ($58.5million) and public and privategrants ($14.7million). Other intrigu-ing projects include the conversionof the imposing central rail station tohousing and the RivermarkApartments, converted from aHoliday Inn.

Cleveland, Ohio – Despite anominous population decline in thecity overall, the 2000 census indicat-ed a 51-percent growth in downtownhousing to a total of 8,105 units. Theregeneration of the WarehouseDistrict has contributed to thischange, where an investment of$133 million has paid off with 1,000apartments and associated nightlife.


Downtown housing is a long-awaited and much-heralded success.

Planned housing development in Charlotte, N.C.

ConclusionClearly downtown housing is a

long-awaited and much-heraldedsuccess. But is that really the case?Upon closer scrutiny, it appearsthat unless several warning signsare heeded, downtown housing may fall short ofits full potential. In too many situations, vital serv-ices such as grocery stores, hair salons, dentists ordry cleaners are missing. Houses of worship,branch libraries, YMCAs and public schools arealso absent.

Lower-income and family living is essential tobring balance to the current dominance of affluentsingles and wealthy empty-nesters. Given the risethat has already occurred in land values, such amove will most likely require public subsidies.

Before high-rises are built, their architecturalqualities require design review. An ugly buildingthat is three stories high cannot mar the skyline ofa downtown as much as a slapdash structure ris-ing 30 stories.

Parking, when allowed to remain at or nearsuburban ratios, means less walking, biking or

mass transit use and undermines aspirations for a24/7 lifestyle.

How downtowns will relate to suburbs is yetanother issue. Even in larger cities, downtownpopulations will not likely exceed 30,000 resi-dences while metropolitan regions are in the mil-lions and still growing. Even more foreboding is arecent contingent of suburban developers whohave jumped on the bandwagon with plans to con-struct loft condos “for people who don’t want tolive in the city.”

Nevertheless, the hope is that with each projectcompleted, downtown housing will take anotherstep toward overcoming the warning signs whilecontinuing to enrich the urban experience in theprocess.

Martin Zimmerman is an architect, planner and urbanaffairs journalist currently residing in Charlotte, N.C.


Memphis, Tenn.

Mixed housing andaffordable housing

must exist.


If you rebuild,

A s former director of the National Trust Main Street Center,Kennedy Smith knows Smart Growth when she sees it —even when serendipity rather than strategy is driving the bus.

A program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, theMain Street Center helps towns and neighborhoods revive declin-ing business districts through a tried-and-true blend of design,development and restoration activities. Supported by public andprivate investment, the Main Street approach provides communi-ties with a blueprint for reviving and preserving the unique histo-ry, architecture and vitality of old-fashioned downtowns.

In most cases, says Smith, communities adopt the Main Streetapproach as a way to fight back against outlying shopping mallsand superstores that have sucked the life out of their longtime com-mercial cores. However, like a box of Cracker Jacks, Main Streetinitiatives offer something besides the popcorn and peanuts of eco-nomic development. They also offer a prize — Smart Growth.

By transforming downtrodden downtowns into desirable desti-nations, Main Streets not only give communities an economic shotin the arm, they also give them a new tool to manage both commer-cial and residential growth — whether they know it or not. “Everycommunity comes to it from a different direction,” says Smith, nowa principal with the Community Land Use and Economics Group.Some recognize the Main Street approach as a Smart Growth strat-egy and treat it that way. In most communities, though, the linkbetween Main Streets and Smart Growth remains “a happy coinci-dence,” she says.


By Brad Broberg

will they come?the revitalization of Main Street


In Connecticut, for instance, the power companystarted a statewide Main Street program because itwanted to spark growth in places where it alreadyprovided service and douse demand for new con-nections outside of town, says Smith. “They wereSmart Growth advocates without realizing it,” shesays.

Either way, if done right, Main Street initiativespromote key principles of Smart Growth — including

density, walkability and infill — with both a carrotand a stick. The carrot is a rejuvenated businessdistrict that attracts people and development alikeand makes the entire community more prosperousand appealing. The stick is a set of zoning regula-tions that force — or at least strongly steer — devel-opment toward Main Street rather than letting itooze to the outskirts of town and beyond.

Smith can point to many communities that aremaking all the right moves, using Main Streetstrategies to rekindle traditional business districtswhile at the same time fostering Smart Growth. It’sa two-birds-with-one-stone game plan that’s

spreading as Main Street initiatives — both newand old — begin to include more housing, saysSmith. And why not? Downtown residential growthnot only offers a potential alternative to sprawl, itgenerates more customers for downtown mer-chants, she notes.

Consider Burlington, Iowa, population 26,500.Perched on the banks of the Mississippi River inthe southeast corner of the state, Burlington was

once a bustling steamboat port and booming rail-road hub. But that was 100 years ago. Over time —and under pressure from a new shopping mall —the city’s once-thriving downtown slowly declined.Burlington’s nadir came in 1980 when the onceprestigious Hotel Burlington — or the H telBurlingto as locals dubbed it after letters starteddisappearing from its sign — closed, says Smith.

Fed up with being boarded up, Burlingtonlaunched a Main Street initiative in 1986 thatsteadily turned downtown around. In the begin-ning, that meant restoring downtown’s retail pulseby forming public-private partnerships, recruiting

If done right, Main Street initiatives promotekey principles of Smart Growth.

Burlington, Iowa


hundreds of volunteers and encouraging commu-nity-based investment to redevelop hundreds ofonce-proud properties in need of some TLC — andtenants.

Now, however, it’s time to reassess where newopportunities lie, says Val Giannettino, executivedirector of Downtown Partners Inc., which man-ages the town’s Main Street program. “We have toreinvent ourselves,” she says.

Taking its cue from a statewide push to promotedowntown living, Burlington is adding more andmore housing to its downtown mix, saysGiannettino. Yes, she admits, uttering Iowa anddowntown living in the same breath sounds akinto associating Manhattan with corn fields, but thatdoesn’t bother Burlington. “We have a downtownthat would welcome all kinds of people,” saysGiannettino. “We have tons of room to grow.”

The story of Schramm’s Department Store sym-bolizes Burlington’s possible new future. Afteranchoring downtown Burlington for more than150 years, Schramm’s closed in 1996 and satvacant until a developer converted it into a mixed-use building with commercial tenants below and13 upscale condominiums — featuring expansiveviews of the river — above. “When people tour thebuilding, they are blown away,” says Giannettino.

The Schramm’s project followed in the foot-steps of downtown Burlington’s first big residen-tial project — the use of tax credits to help convertthe Hotel Burlington into 75 units of senior hous-ing in 1998. Now, with the help of a $615,000 fed-eral grant, three downtown property owners areconverting the upper floors of their commercialbuildings into a dozen affordable housing units,says Giannettino.

The tax credits and grant, while welcome, pointto one of the biggest hurdles facing many MainStreet towns as they pursue residential growth.“The greatest challenge is cost,” says Giannettino.“There is a short list of people here with themoney to do those kinds of projects.”

The other challenge involves geography.Burlington is not within commuting distance of ametropolitan area or its suburbs and offers limitedways for people to earn a living. Still, the potentialto absorb residential growth downtown is enor-mous as numerous classic brick warehouses standempty along the river waiting for a second life.“We’re poised and very ready for growth,” saysGiannettino.

Littleton, NH, is another Main Street townwhere housing is becoming a bigger part of thedowntown mix. In Littleton’s case, demand isstrong as a housing crunch — fueled in part by thearea’s recreational attractions — has created a

robust residential market, says Ruth Taylor, direc-tor of the community’s Main Street program.

Littleton, a 220-year-old town outside WhiteMountain National Forest in the northwest part ofthe state, launched its Main Street program in1997 after being hit hard by the loss of manufac-turing jobs. At one point, residents saw 17 vacantstorefronts every time they went downtown. Withcommunity-funded facade improvements, specialevents and market research providing the initialmomentum, the Main Street approach soonhelped pull Littleton out of its tailspin.

We have a downtownthat would welcome allkinds of people...andtons of room to grow.

Littleton, N.H.


Having regained its commercial health, down-town Littleton is entering a new stage as the hothousing market and a glut of office space are driv-ing the conversion of upper-floor offices into apart-ments, says Taylor. “More would be great,” shenotes.

Still, density can be a hard sell in a state where“zoning almost doesn’t exist” and the official mottois “Live free or die,” says Taylor. A proposal to buildclustered housing within walking distance ofdowntown was rejected at the town meeting twoyears ago, she says. The decision came despite thefact that sprawl is a very real threat, says Taylor.“Unless you’ve lived in a city, you don’t understandthe value of dense housing,” she says.

Founded in the 1840s by Dutch settlers,Holland, Mich., is a Main Street town with adiverse and growing mix of downtown housingoptions, including housing for students and stafffrom Hope College, two large senior-housing com-plexes, a pair of upscale condo communities andnumerous apartments above storefronts.

“We like to see a mix of uses downtown and

housing is part of that,” says Phil Meyer, director ofcommunity and neighborhood services. Also in themix are a growing number of new restaurants andgalleries complementing traditional retail andservice business — a trend symbolized by the open-ing of a brew pub in a former hardware store.

Located just west of Grand Rapids a few milesfrom the shores of Lake Michigan, Holland, popu-lation 33,000, kicked off its Main Street initiative in1984 to counter competition from a series of pro-posed outlying shopping malls. “Downtown was, Iwouldn’t saying dying, but it was tired and strug-gling quite a bit at the time with the changing pat-terns of shopping,” says Meyer.

Things heated up — literally — in 1988. That’swhen the Main Street Committee spearheaded acomprehensive public-private streetscape projectbeautifying downtown’s main drag and installing anetwork of pipes below the pavement that provideradiant heat to keep a five-block area of downtownice- and snow-free during the winter.

One of the challenges facing any Main Streetinitiative is the need to provide ongoing support. In

We like to see a mix of uses downtown and housing is part of that.

Littleton Main Street, N.H.


Holland, a Downtown Development Authority(DDA) appointed by the city council supports theMain Street initiative by assessing property own-ers to provide management and maintenanceservices. The DDA also collects an assessment toprovide free customer and employee parking. Inaddition, assessments to fund marketing and pro-motion are collected via a state-authorized princi-pal shopping district.

Proof that Main Street initiatives provide a

vehicle for the long haul came recently when ashopping mall that had once threatened down-town Holland and inspired the downtown’s revi-talization went bankrupt. “They lost out not onlyto downtown, but also to another shopping mallbuilt further away,” says Meyer.

Brad Broberg is a Seattle-based freelance writer special-izing in business and development issues. His workappears regularly in the Puget Sound Business Journaland the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

THE NATIONAL TRUST MAIN STREET CENTER is the nation’s clear-inghouse for information, technical assistance, research and advocacyrelated to commercial district revitalization and preservation — allbased on the center’s trademark Main Street Four-Point Approach.

Design: Enhance the physical appearance of the commercial district byrehabilitating historic buildings, encouraging supportive new construc-tion, developing sensitive design management systems and promotinglong-term planning.

Organization: Build consensus and cooperation among the manygroups and individuals that have a role in the revitalization process.

Promotion: Market the traditional commercial district’s assets to cus-tomers, potential investors, new businesses, local citizens and visitors.

Economic restructuring: Strengthen the district’s existing economicbase while founding ways to expand it to meet new opportunities —and challenges — from outlying development.

Source: National Trust Main Street Center of the National Trust for HistoricPreservation (www.mainstreet.org).

The Code Word is

growth


Building codesare reflecting the demand

for revamping older structures By John Van Gieson

SMART


The historic city of Newark, New Jersey’slargest, had fallen on hard times. Rackedby a deadly riot in 1967, Newark spiraled

downward into decay, poverty and crime. Itspopulation plummeted from a peak of 473,000in 1950 to about 273,000 currently.

But today, Newark is going through aremarkable renaissance assisted in large part bya New Jersey building code facilitating renova-tion of older buildings. Known as the“Rehabilitation Subcode,” the new code inJersey was designed to remove the barriers thatmade revitalization of vacant and underutilizedolder buildings prohibitively expensive andridiculously complicated.

In the Garden State, a densely populatedstate where half the housing stock was builtbefore 1959, that’s a very good idea.

“The Rehabilitation Subcode has led to a‘rehabilitation renaissance’ in New Jersey,”said Susan Bass Levin, commissioner of thestate’s Department of Community Affairs.“Because the Rehabilitation Subcode eliminatesunnecessary regulatory barriers to the reuse ofexisting older buildings, projects throughout thestate that were once overlooked by developersare finding new life and expanding housing andjob opportunities for New Jersey residents.”

Smart building codes promoting rehabilita-tion of older buildings have become a valuableSmart Growth tool. Maryland adopted a smartbuilding code based largely on the New Jerseyexperience, followed by Rhode Island, NewYork and other states. Cities that have adoptedsmart buildings codes include Wilmington,Delaware; Wichita, Kansas; and Kansas City,Missouri.

Existing building codes typically imposerequirements that make sense in new buildingsbut may impede reuse of older buildings.

“Local codes and regulations often act asimpediments to Smart Growth, urban revitaliza-tion and livable communities,” said Ed


McMahon, a senior resident fellow at the UrbanLand Institute. “Developers who would protect theenvironment or restore a historic building are oftenstymied by inflexible regulations.”

“While these laws differ in their specifics, theyall share a recognition that while older buildingsneed to meet standards for safety and accessibility(just as new buildings do), they can be evaluatedand regulated differently,” McMahon said.

Smart Growth advocates, building code organiza-tions, historic preservationists and home builders allextol the virtues of smart building codes promotingrevitalization of older buildings, but the movementhas been relatively slow to catch on.

The best available information on the number ofjurisdictions using smart building codes comesfrom the International Code Council (ICC), whichadopted its model International Existing BuildingCode in 2003.

Shortly after New Jersey adopted its new code in1997, the U.S. Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment developed its model code, theNationally Applicable Recommended RehabilitationProvisions (NARRP) for use by other jurisdictions.The ICC drew heavily on HUD’s model code indeveloping its code for rehabilitation of existingbuildings. The National Fire Protection Associationhas also developed a model rehabilitation code.

“With the endorsement of the two national groupsat the core of code writing, we’ll hopefully see more state and local jurisdictions adopting reha-bilitation codes,” said Johns Hopkins, executivedirector of Baltimore Heritage, a historic preserva-tion organization.

The ICC reported that four states have adoptedits existing building code: Michigan, Montana,New Mexico and West Virginia. Local governments have adopted the ICC code in 12other states.

HUD spokesman Brian E. Sullivan said it comesas no surprise that local officials have been slow toadopt new building codes promoting rehabilitationof existing buildings. “Adoption of a new code for-mat takes many years to be fully accepted in thethousands of local jurisdictions that adopt codes,”he said. “Also many communities have not adoptedan existing building code but rely on their regularbuilding code.”

Concerns that rehabilitation codes may compro-mise the safety of older buildings is also a factor, butsmart building code advocates say it shouldn’t be.

“All of the rehabilitation codes that I know ofhave very high standards as far as safety require-ments go,” Hopkins said.

Given the slow pace at which rehab codes arebeing adopted, it will take years before other statescatch up to New Jersey.

Toward the end of the last century, Newarkappeared headed for a place on the scrap heap ofwasted cities. To its advantage, however, Newarkhad a large supply of fundamentally sound oldbuildings that with the right tools could be convert-

Smart building codes promoting rehabilitation of older buildings have become a valuable SmartGrowth tool.


ed into the centerpieces of a dynamic, revitalizedcity. The New Jersey Rehabilitation Subcodehelped to provide those tools, along with the open-ing of the $187 million New Jersey PerformingArts Center in downtown Newark in 1997. For thefirst time in years, New Jersey residents had a rea-son to reconsider Newark.

Many existing homes have been or are beingrehabilitated in the city’s residential areas, and sev-eral major redevelopment projects are planned fordowntown Newark, including:

•Clinton Street Lofts, a 10-story Beaux Arts officebuilding constructed in 1906 that is being convertedinto apartments renting for $800 to $1,375 a month.

•Hahne-Griffith, an old department store andnext-door office building that are being convertedinto 266 apartments.

•National Newark Building, the city’s tallest at465 feet, an Art Deco office building that opened in1931, that was converted into a high-tech officetower where cheaper rents are luring tenants acrossthe Hudson River from New York.

•1180 Raymond Boulevard, a vacant 448-footArt Deco office building being converted into 195market-rate apartments and 315 apartments forSeton Hall University Law School students.

The National Newark and 1180 RaymondBoulevard renovations are projects of CogswellRealty Group, which is spending $180 million torenovate the historic skyscrapers in the heart ofNewark. Cogswell has taken the lead in investingin the new downtown Newark.

The Rehabilitation Subcode was an importantfactor in redeveloping Newark, Jersey City andother New Jersey cities, said William M. Connolly,director of the New Jersey Division of Codes andStandards. In the first year after the code was

The New Jersey code wasspecifically designed toremove barriers...that were discouraging renovation of old buildings.

adopted, rehabilitation spending in the state’s fivelargest cities increased by 60 percent, compared to1.6 percent the previous year.

“The (1180 Raymond Boulevard) project archi-tect told us that without the new code it would nothave been feasible,” he said.

The New Jersey code was specifically designedto remove barriers, such as requiring renovators towiden hallways, that were discouraging renovationof old buildings. It creates four distinct categories,repair, alteration, addition and change of occupan-cy, with separate rules for each.

New Jersey, along with many other jurisdictions,used to apply the “25/50 Rule” to rehabilitationprojects. If the estimated cost of the rehabilitationwork was less than 25 percent of the building’svalue, building officials had flexibility to determine

the extent to which the project had to comply withbuilding codes. If the value was between 25 and 50percent, all of the rehabilitation work had to con-form to the building codes. If it was greater than 50percent, the entire building had to be brought up tocode.

The old New Jersey code went even farther,requiring full compliance with light, ventilation,egress and fire safety provisions if the rehabilita-tion involved more than 5 percent of the building’sfloor space.

There was a certain amount of flexibility in theold code, but flexibility is frequently incompatiblewith bureaucracy.

“Codes are ultimately enforced by human beingsand some peoples’ interpretations vary and that’swhat it is,” Hopkins said. “That aspect of it has not


Local governments thatembrace the code arerewarded with financialincentives.

changed with Smart Codes; it’sstill enforced and interpreted byhuman beings, but what we saidwe were setting out to do (inMaryland) was codify commonsense.”

Maryland built on the NewJersey experience in 2000 whenit adopted a building rehabilita-tion code known as SmartCodes. Local governments thatembrace the code are rewardedwith financial incentives.

The Maryland incentivesinclude priority for participatingin state funding programs, his-toric preservation tax credits,and refunding up to 20 percentof the cost of rehabilitation.

“It made huge numbers ofprojects feasible that were notfeasible before the refunds wheninto effect,” said HarriettTregoning, chair of the Smart Growth LeadershipInstitute. She is the former director of theMaryland Office of Smart Growth.

Even political groups are endorsing smartbuilding codes. In an article on its Web site, theNew Democrats Online concluded, “In order tosave our stock of historic housing, state and local

governments need to make it possible for builders toconvert old buildings to new uses. Ultimately, SmartGrowth cannot work if you cannot build, if peoplecannot reuse, and if people cannot redevelop.”

John Van Gieson is a freelance writer based inTallahassee, Florida. He owns and runs Van GiesonMedia Relations, Inc.

Smart Growthcannot work if you cannotbuild, if peoplecannot reuse, and if peoplecannot redevelop.



In the evolution of retail, shopping malls as we know themrepresent the end of an era. Increasingly, underperformingor obsolete malls — a.k.a. “greyfield” sites — are going the

way of the dinosaur and being replaced by mixed-use neighbor-hoods, which allow residents to reach many of their daily needsby simply taking a short walk from their residences. Shops,restaurants, transit links, parks, offices, cultural buildings suchas libraries and other needs of modern life are situated near res-idential choices that include single-family homes, apartments,condominiums and live/work buildings.

Greyfields are becoming an increasingly common sight in theAmerican landscape, the most common iteration of which is theconventional strip mall whose anchor tenant has moved out orwhose bottom line has succumbed to the pressures of competi-tion from discount stores, Internet commerce and newer malls innewer suburbs. In its 2001 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers,the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) reported that 19 per-cent of the nation’s 2,000 regional malls were in greyfield statusor vulnerable to becoming so, having sales per square foot of$150 or less (one-third the rate of sales at a successful mall).Other studies have estimated between 4,000 and 5,500 smallergreyfield malls nationally.

Resources for revivalThe CNU maintains certain principles for success when

transforming greyfields into desirable places:• Evolve the site from a single structure into a district

with subdistricts• Establish a street pattern• Reorient activity to face the street• Connect with the surrounding community• Integrate multiple uses• Design for human scale• Include housing• Customize to fit local needsBut following these principles can be a challenge for munici-

palities that are uncertain how to proceed or unaware of theresources available to them. One such resource is the third phaseof the CNU greyfields study, slated for release in summer 2005.

Transforminggreyfield sites

into new communities

By Jason MillernewWhat once was old is now

Left and above: Belmar in Lakewood, Colo.


Following up on the first two phases, which identi-fied the greyfields problem and presented casestudies on in-progress projects, the third-phasereport aims to serve as a guide for property owners,developers, city officials and other communityleaders to use in analyzing greyfields in theirneighborhoods. The report encourages an open-minded approach to greyfield redevelopment, stat-ing that a mixed-use neighborhood is not alwaysthe best strategy for renewal; often, renovation orreuse are more feasible approaches. For more infor-mation on the study, visit the CNU Web site atwww.cnu.org.

Greyfield projects are booming, according toNew Urban News, a New Urbanist newsletterbased in Ithaca, New York. In late 2003 it counted43 infill, greyfield and brownfield developments inits annual list of New Urban projects. The moremature greyfield redevelopment projects are thebeneficiaries of committed local city governments,and are following New Urbanist principles to muchsuccess.

BelmarLakewood, Colorado

One of the more sweeping greyfield transforma-tions in the nation, Belmar is a mixed-use renova-tion and redevelopment of the failing Villa Italiamall in Lakewood — Colorado’s fourth-largest city.Composed of 23 city blocks (104 acres), Belmar has

become a bustling, vibrant downtown district forLakewood, which had no such district before therenovation effort began.

The recipient of a 2005 CNU Charter Award,Belmar is approximately 40 percent complete atpress time, with build-out scheduled for anotherseven to 10 years. It represents the cumulative willof the city of Lakewood and its residents, who clam-ored for a downtown, an identity for the city, saysWill Fleissig, director for planning and design withContinuum Partners LLC, the project’s developer.

“The community had a very clear vision aboutwhat it wanted,” says Fleissig. “And now the visionhas national implications. We took a 1.4-million-square-foot mall and worked with the city to down-size the retail and make the site denser without cre-ating a burden on the existing street — the transitlines allowed this. If you can increase a site’s den-sity by two or three times while not increasing theburden on the adjoining roads, well, that’s what weneed to be doing in America — especially in theinner-ring suburbs.”

In order to get out of the ground, however,Belmar needed more than political and communitywill. “To create a downtown, you need to createsome kind of structured parking, and that can bedifficult to afford,” says Fleissig. “The city workedwith us on investment that allowed for the newsales tax revenues from the project to be garneredfor the roads, the trees, the parking. It was a perfectfinancing solution — and it worked.”

Greyfield projects are booming, according to

New Urban News.

The market at Belmar


Local response to Belmar has been encourag-ing, says Fleissig. “We’re seeing quite a bit of rein-vestment around the site — a resurgence in devel-opment in the vicinity. There’s at least a halfdozen of these types of development nearby, try-ing to leverage our success.”

Belmar has only recently opened up its first res-idential offerings, but even in these early stages,the home-buying public likes what it sees, saysSteve Jones, a REALTOR® with Denver-basedKentwood City Properties. “We’re presently sell-ing 12 loft-style condos in a mixed-use building, amore modern style and type which is pretty muchthe first of its kind in Lakewood. Out of those 12units, we’ve closed four and have four more undercontract.

“The response has been really good, and eventhough some people look in and find the modernloft concept a little too harsh, the people who havebought these properties are just blown away byhaving someone offer something this contempo-rary in Lakewood. The buyers tend to be young,single, professional people who can’t afford to livein downtown Denver, but want the feel of an urbanloft.”

The Belmar loft condos are selling for $239,000to $255,000. All are 1,020 square feet and offer onebedroom with a study or a den, plus a bathroom,private outdoor spaces, garage parking and addi-tional storage.

“The people who visit on the weekends areoverwhelmed at how many people are out andabout, enjoying the space,” says Jones. “In myopinion, five years down the road, Belmar is goingto be used as a model across the country for howto do a huge infill project out of a mall. It feels likea real downtown — and it’s only been created inthe last year.”

Santana RowSan Jose, California

Santana Row started with a bang. In August2002, barely a year into its construction and amere month before its scheduled grand opening,an unexplained fire erupted, torching 34 apart-ment units in the development. It was the largestfire in San Jose history, and it put a damper onSantana Row’s momentum, pushing the grandopening out to the end of 2002.

Borrowing its name from Santana Park, a near-by half-acre park that eventually will be incorpo-

It feels like a realdowntown — and it’sonly been created inthe last year.

Belmar in Lakewood, Colo.

rated into the project, the 42-acre Santana Row isthe largest mixed-use project ever built in San Jose.At $1 billion, its price tag bears that out. In its pastlife, Santana Row was the Town & Country Mall, aconventional, single-story strip mall that had suf-fered from reduced patronage and sales tax rev-enue. In March 1997, Maryland-based developerFederal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT) purchasedthe property, razing the mall and beginning con-struction in 2001. This paved the way for a new,mixed-use development that FRIT contends willprovide a “unique mix of shopping, dining, enter-tainment and living, designed to enhance the indi-vidual experience.”

So far, that prediction has held true. Modeledafter a typical European urban space, Santana Rowboasts high-density, mixed-use buildings thathouse every urban amenity imaginable — includ-ing the 213-room Hotel Valencia and a 12-screencinema. The raw numbers alone are impressive:

• 558,000 square ft. of retail (680,000 sq. ft. atcompletion)

• 501 residential units, of which 219 are condos(1,201 residential units at completion)

Retail options at Santana Row are decidedlyupscale, but many offer their wares to residents fora discount. Walk down the pedestrian-friendlymain street and you’ll see more than 100 stores,with names such as Gucci, Diesel, Ann Taylor,Burberry, Anthropologie, and Crate & Barrel. The

18-plus restaurants — many from San Francisco,like Blowfish Sushi and the Straits Café — are get-ting great reviews, and a traditional farmers’ mar-ket helps to leaven the scene with a bit of down-to-earth flavor.

Cutting-edge technology inclusions mix wellwith the elegant European ambience here. The res-idential dwelling units offer broadband Internetaccess, wireless capabilities, 500-channel DirectTV,and multi-line phone service. A high-tech, 24-hourfitness center hosts residents. At the same time, twoparks are just a stroll away, outfitted with outdoorchess, an outdoor theater, splashing fountains andeye-candy landscaping.

These condo properties were available for salemere days before this article went to press. But withwall-to-wall amenities only steps away from resi-dents’ doorsteps, few can doubt the sales potential.Already, Santana is generating sales tax revenuefor the city of San Jose and the numbers are risingsteadily.

Like most redevelopment projects of its scale,though, Santana Row has not been without contro-versy. While some observers hail it as a model forSmart Growth, others have criticized it for compet-ing too aggressively with San Jose’s newly revital-ized downtown — just 3 .5 miles away — andanother neighboring retail concern, the Valley FairMall. But Santana Row’s retail tenants dispute thisconcern, saying those claims are unwarranted, that

the development is filling a retailniche that will attract a differentmarket segment: one that willrespond to Santana Row’s promiseof a place where residents can live,eat, shop, stay and play — withoutever getting in their cars.

BayshoreGlendale, Wisconsin

Built in 1955, the BayshoreMall in Glendale, Wis., is about toget a new lease on life. In need ofserious renovations, the mallstruggled to compete in thechanging marketplace of south-eastern Wisconsin.

Since many residents in thearea leave the state and travel tothe Chicago area, where there is a


A place where residents can live, eat, shop, stay,and play — without ever getting in their cars.

Santana Row, San Jose, Calif.

wider variety of retail options, developer Steiner +Associates saw an opportunity to bring upscaleretail to the region. In addition, Glendale, a com-munity minutes from downtown Milwaukee, wasin need of its own town center to attract visitorsfrom all over the state and bring Glendale a bettersense of community.

The owner of the mall, Dallas-based CorriganHoldings, partnered with the city of Glendale’sCommunity Development Authority, which pro-vided crucial public funding to move the $300-million project through the planning stages andinto the construction phase. “This is an excitingtime for the city of Glendale and its surroundingcommunities,” says Glendale Mayor Jay Hintze.“Over the next few years, Bayshore Mall will betransformed into a community gathering place —a town center that we’ve never seen before. Theevolution of the new Bayshore Mall will be excit-ing to watch and will have a tremendous impacton the city of Glendale and the entire North Shore area.”

When complete, Bayshore will combine itsopen-air, town-square-style components with arevitalized, enclosed mall component, offering 1.2million square feet of retail space. Retail choiceswill range from large anchor tenants like BostonStore, Sears and Kohl’s Department Store to manysmaller retailers. Bayshore will include 180,000

square feet of office space and 150,000 square feetof entertainment space, including several restau-rants and a possible comedy club and/or art the-ater complex. Also included in the mixed-use proj-ect is a residential component that will consist of81 townhouse condominiums and 120 upscaleapartments. A one-acre “town square” park willalso grace Bayshore, providing a suitable localefor public gatherings, concerts and possibly iceskating.

At press time, Bayshore had begun its construc-tion phase. The project is slated for completion infall 2006.

Reclaiming the landBelmar, Santana Row and Bayshore are just

three examples of a nationwide effort to transformtroubled properties into vibrant places where peo-ple want to live, work and play. As malls and otherlarge-scale developments buckle under their ownunsustainable weight or unforeseen market forces,more opportunities should arise for knowledge-able city officials, developers, community leadersand REALTORS® to reclaim the land, fix the mis-takes or simply move a property toward its nextincarnation — hopefully, one that will last longerand contribute more to its community.

Jason Miller is a freelance writer, editor and publishingconsultant based in St. Paul, Minnesota.


Santana Row, San Jose, Calif.

By Brad Broberg


attractionsIn the ebb and flow of American population

trends, many older towns and small cities havebeen treading water. However, as many people

now search for lifestyle options, those communitiesare in a position to play a leading role in managinggrowth.

So says longtime planner and designer AlanFeinberg. Feinberg is convinced that helping “over-the-hill” towns and cities become more desirableplaces to live can spell the difference between con-tinued — and wasteful — consumption of openspace and a more thoughtful and sustainableapproach to growth.

Together with veteran contractor Nick Tittas,Feinberg founded Central Maryland DevelopmentInc. (CMD) to practice what he preaches. As Smart

Growth advocates, Feinberg and Tittas are passion-ate about fostering redevelopment — social, eco-nomic and physical — in the small cities west of theWashington/Baltimore metro area. “These are greatold towns that have sort of been preserved in amberfor decades,” says Feinberg. “They are places thatwere once real places that have fallen on hardtimes and they need to reinvent themselves.”

One such place is Hagerstown, MD. A blue-collarcity of 37,000, Hagerstown sits smack dab in front ofthe sprawl that is spreading westward from thecoast. Not long ago, Hagerstown took a giant steptoward reinventing its future when the University ofMaryland chose downtown Hagerstown as the sitefor a new branch campus. “That’s the best economicengine you could have,” says Feinberg.

of the small town

Small towns are drawing population,but they too must practice Smart Growth

Walworth County, Lake Geneva, Wis.


Optimistic about Hagerstown’s potential, CMDpurchased a 4,000-square-foot building at a keydowntown location and is converting it into a com-bination office/condominium. It is the first ofmany such projects CMD hopes to tackle and/orencourage others to tackle in downtownHagerstown.

Not long ago, CMD convened the “HagerstownInitiative,” a gathering of more than 20 planningand development types who sympathize withCMD’s vision — not just for Hagerstown but forthe country in general. “There are enough exam-ples all around to see the problem with just doingit the way it’s always been done — it’s not denseenough and it doesn’t pay for itself,” saysFeinberg. “Water lines, sewer lines, schools…itjust doesn’t cover the costs.”

The same dynamic driving Feinberg’s efforts inMaryland — the outgoing tide of metro popula-tions — is at work at many other places around thecountry. In many cases, it’s occurring in similarcounties — those on the edge of major metropoli-tan areas. Walworth County, Wis., is one of thoseplaces.

Squeezed between Milwaukee and Chicago —both less than an hour away — the county’s manylakes and rural charms have long made it a popu-lar vacation escape for metro residents. Now, moreand more of them are starting to make WalworthCounty their permanent home. The county’s pop-ulation of 97,000 is expected to grow by 25 percentover the next 15 years, which will put pressure onthe agricultural open space surrounding the coun-ty’s cities and villages, says Michael Cotter, direc-tor of the county’s land-use and resource manage-ment department.

“As a rule, the county wants to retain its agricul-tural character,” says Cotter. “I think that mostpeople have that interest at heart. The (municipal-ities) are very interested in attracting growth anddoing infill.”

To help make that happen, Walworth County’svarious jurisdictions — cities, villages, unincorpo-rated townships and the county itself — haveformed a committee to work on their state-man-dated comprehensive plans together to ensurethey are not at cross-purposes when it comes todiscouraging sprawl and encouraging Smart

Growth. In the meantime, the county has passed aConservation Subdivision Ordinance that pro-vides incentives to developers who build clusteredhousing such as the Sugar Creek Preserve, a 52-home subdivision that leaves 175 acres as openspace.

Compared to Walworth County, ChaffeeCounty, Colo., would seem to have little to fearfrom sprawl. The nearest large city, Pueblo, is 100miles away and Denver is 140 miles away.Nevertheless, growth is a pressing issue.

Nestled between the 14,000-foot peaks of theRocky Mountains, Chaffee County sits in the high-and-dry Arkansas River Valley and has beengrowing at a rapid pace as more and more peoplediscover its natural beauty and recreational attrac-tions. While the county’s actual population gainmay seem small — an increase from 12,684 in1990 to more than 17,000 today — the percentagegain is not — 34 percent.

Certainly, Chaffee County has plenty of roomwithin its 1,015 square miles to accommodatemany more residents, but that’s not the point, saysKathy Leinz, co-county administrator. “We don’twant to lose the quality of life that people have

They are places thathave fallen on hardtimes…they need toreinvent themselves.


come and stayed here for,” she says.Chaffee County is working closely with the

county’s three towns to pursue a new land-usestrategy intended to ensure most of the county’swide open spaces remain wide and open. “We wantto focus growth around the towns, says Don Reimer,planning director.

The problem — not just for Chaffee County butfor outlying counties everywhere — is that peopledon’t necessarily want to live in or around a townwhen they move from a metro area. “They wantacreage,” says Ken Johnson, a demographer andprofessor of sociology at Loyola University ofChicago.

Johnson is the author of “The Rural Rebound,” aspecial report for the Population Reference Bureau

that describes the rise, fall and rise again of ruralpopulations in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.Between 1990 and 1998, 71 percent of the nation’srural counties gained population, reportedJohnson. The total gain was 3.6 million people,who Johnson described as a mixed lot of “retirees,blue-collar workers, lone-eagle professionals anddisenchanted city dwellers.” Since that time, therate of growth has slowed, but the trend continues,he says.

While Johnson’s research targeted county popu-lation trends, he also gained considerable insightinto the realities governing the ability of smalltowns to capture growth and curb sprawl. “Itdepends on how powerful the planning boards andcommunity leaders are about addressing what’shappening to their land, says Johnson. Not onlythat, but small towns must provide people with rea-sons to live there — especially jobs if the towns arelocated beyond commuting range from a metroarea. “Would they like growth? Yes,” says Johnson.“Are they going to get it? Probably not withoutamenities.”

One way some small towns are making them-selves more attractive is to use the Main Streetapproach to bring back the traditional. In Hercules,Calif., a Bay Area suburb of 20,000 that never hada traditional downtown, public-private partner-ships are creating a Town Center as well as a 167-acre Waterfront Quarter featuring four neighbor-

The countywants to retain its

agriculturalcharacter…

most peoplehave that

interestat heart.

Hagerstown, Md.


hoods with narrow tree-lined streets and distinctarchitecture.

“If you’re looking for a placeless Californiabedroom suburb implementing Smart Growth…this is it,” said Steve Lawton, Hercules planningdirector, in a case study published on the LocalGovernment Commission Web site.

And then there’s the Chaffee County town ofBuena Vista, population 2,500. There, the brother-sister development team of Jed and Kate Selbyhave purchased 40 acres along the Arkansas Riverand are building a New Urbanism community inan Old West town, mingling various types of hous-ing, businesses and — since the Selbys are avidkayakers — a whitewater kayak park.

Called South Main, the community has roomfor 800 new residents. “We’re pretty excited thishas come along,” said Jerry L’Estrange, the com-munity’s town administrator. “It puts a significantamount of housing in a confined space and helpsnegate some of the sprawl.”

About 20 years ago, Chaffee County beganallowing ranchers to subdivide their land as longas each parcel is at least two acres — any smaller

and the parcel must be connected to municipalwater and sewer services. Now, that decision hascome back to haunt the county in the form ofsprawl. “The precedent was set a while back andit’s hard to get the pendulum to swing back.” saysL’Estrange. “For some of these ranchers (theopportunity to subdivide) is their retirementfund.”

Together with the county, Buena Vista andother cities have been working on intergovern-mental agreements that would encourage a moreconcentrated approach to ranch-land develop-ment and ensure that less of the landscape isfreckled with homes.

“What we’re trying to do is guide develop-ment,” said L’Estrange.“We want it to stay out ofthe hillsides and open ranch spaces. Tourism isprobably the county’s number one industry. If webegin to look like everybody else in the country,who will want to come and visit us?”

Brad Broberg is a Seattle-based freelance writer special-izing in business and development issues. His workappears regularly in the Puget Sound Business Journaland the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

We don’t want to lose the quality of life thatpeople have come and stayed here for.

Oktoberfest in Lake Geneva, Wis.

Vacant properties belong high onthe list of things most likely todamage a neighborhood — some-

times irreparably. An empty house orbuilding decreases surrounding propertyvalues, reduces tax revenues, raisesmunicipal costs, attracts crime and posesa fire hazard. Add to these quantifiablechallenges the very real psychologicaldamage done to residents living in dis-tressed neighborhoods and you have aformula for blight in every sense of theword.

The problem is pervasive. While thenortheast and Midwest U.S. have higherlevels of vacancies, there are isolatedand scattered pockets of abandonment invirtually all cities or metro areas — evenin fast-growing cities like Las Vegas, SanDiego and Tucson.

Strategies and solutionsThe problem of vacant properties is

dire, but several key organizations andprogressive cities and states have joinedforces to find solutions. One of the fore-most players is the National VacantProperties Campaign (NVPC), which isrun by Smart Growth America (SGA), theInternational City/County ManagementAssociation (ICMA) and the LocalInitiatives Support Corporation (LISC).

Formally launched in July 2003, theNVPC advocates a synergistic approachto vacant properties, says Joe Schilling,professor in practice at the MetropolitanInstitute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria,Va. and one of the original founders ofNVPC who now directs the research andpolicy programs for the campaign.

“Once each year, we try to gathertogether roughly 100 people — practi-tioners, local government or communitydevelopment organizations, private sec-tor folks, academics, researchers andpublic officials. At first we just wanted toshare with them the purposes of thecampaign and also brainstorm ways theycan get involved, and get guidance fromthem about what they think the cam-paign should be doing and how best theycould use its resources to help them revi-talize vacant properties.” Vac


NoCities struggle to reclaim


By Jason Miller

“Based on their input, we’ve solidified a fourfoldmission:

1. Build a connected network of practitioners,policy makers and researchers. We want peo-ple to know there are other people working onthe same problem.

2. Collect the latest information, research andbest practices, and act as a clearinghouse forthat information.

3. Develop a communication infrastructure — aWeb site (www.vacantproperties.org), listserv,e-newsletter and more.

4. Provide technical assistance; i.e., guidance onwhat strategies and tools a particular commu-nity should use to revitalize vacant properties.

“A lot of the practitioners tend to focus on thetechnical aspects of vacant property revitalization.Others look at the problem through the lens ofbroader policies related to Smart Growth, commu-nity development and regional equity.Intellectually, they recognize that these elementsare all connected, but they tend to look at vacantproperties through one lens or the other. Part of ourmission is to give them that big picture, saying, youreally have to look at both of those dimensions ofvacant properties to be successful.”

Various approaches can be taken to deal withvacant properties, such as demolition and rehabilita-tion, brownfields initiatives, historic preservation andSmart Growth tax incentives, infill development andadaptive reuse. Generally speaking, code enforce-ment programs are one of the more successful tacticsancies

abandoned properties

currently being used. “The thinking here is that ifyou bring a building up to code, it will remain occu-pied,” says Schilling.

But Schilling cautions against adopting codeenforcement in a vacuum. “That’s kind of the rubright now in a lot of cities,” he says. “Don’t just doenforcement alone; it needs to be done in conjunc-tion with housing rehabilitation programs andresources” in order to achieve lasting success.

Stubborn challengesBut even with solid resources at one’s fingertips,

it can be a challenge to begin the process ofreclaiming an abandoned property. Determiningproperty ownership is often the most difficult ele-ment, says Jennifer Leonard, director of the NVPC.“Even if you find the person who you think ownsthe property, they may have passed away and nothad a will. If you find people who simply walkedaway from the property, they might think they don’town it anymore. The picture isn’t always this bleak,but that’s usually one of the big hurdles.”

Not surprisingly, a lack of public funding some-times complicates the situation, says Schilling.“Outside of the EPA’s brownfields money, there’svery little dedicated federal funding.”

Some form of public funding is arguably imper-ative, however, since development in urban set-tings is typically more expensive than developmenton a greenfield site. Title problems, possible envi-ronmental clean-up costs, reluctant lenders — allaffect the ability of a private developer to turn aprofit or even break even. “Public funds are neces-sary in order to help support the infrastructure forreclaiming the property,” says Schilling. “Then,when you get to the stage of reuse, you need somepublic funds in order to support the urban pioneers— the community development corporations, thesmall developers — the sorts of people who are thefirst people back into a distressed neighborhood.Public funds will help these pioneers to redevelopthose first few properties and get a foothold so themarket can take over.”

Successful REALTOR® involvement in BaltimoreIn Baltimore, Md., a coordinated public-private

partnership is playing out. Over the past 50 years,the population there dropped from 950,000 to675,000, leaving nearly 16,000 vacant structuresconcentrated in a handful of areas. In the wake ofthis, the city tried a variety of redevelopmentefforts, each one attended by frustration on behalfof the private sector in its inability to wrest controlfrom the city’s hands, says Bob Pipik, director ofasset management in Baltimore’s Department ofHousing and Community Development.

“The transition began when Mayor O’Malleywas elected in 1999,” says Pipik. A local group,Baltimore Economics and Efficiency Foundation(BEEF), took a hard look at city government func-tioning and identified property disposition assomething that was harder than it needed to be.They recommended to the Mayor that we shouldwork with local REALTORS®.

At the same time, members of the GreaterBaltimore Board of REALTORS® (GBBR) were com-plaining about the abandoned properties, says Jody

Public funds are necessaryin order to help supportthe infrastructure forreclaiming property.


Landers, GBBR executive vice presi-dent. “That’s one of the reasons we gotinvolved in the Selling City OwnedProperties Efficiently (SCOPE) pro-gram,” he says. “Members were say-ing, ‘I drive through the city and thereare all these vacant properties — weneed to do something about them.’”

Landers jumped on the opportunity,and the SCOPE program, designed tocreate a simplified and cost-effectiveprocess for putting vacant, city-ownedproperties to use, was born.

“The BEEF folks and other localgroups put money on the table, andstarted hammering away at thebureaucracy, trying to introduce pri-vate market efficiencies into this situ-ation,” says Pipik. “We had to pullapart the various steps that go intocity government selling a piece ofproperty.”

A process for city acquisition and REALTOR®

selling of the properties was formulated andapproved. Properties were identified; REALTORS®

were selected. The rest, as they say, is history.“The first round was 42 properties, of which we

sold 36,” says Pipik. “We learned a lot of lessonsduring that first round, some of which werepainful. But we also discovered that people wantto buy these houses. Baltimore is in the middle ofa tremendous upsurge in property values — we’restill catching up with the rest of the easternseaboard. And we’re getting lots of interest fromnonprofits, churches, handymen and more.”

Pipik reports that the second round of sales — 45properties — went more smoothly; at press timethey’ve sold five and are on track to sell another 21.

Of particular note is Reservoir Hill, an olderhistorical district that was struggling with aban-donment and the attendant plummeting propertyvalues. “The average sale prices went from$71,000 in 2002 to $250,000 in 2004,” saysLanders. “When we started selling the houses, wewere getting offers between $10,000 and $50,000.During the latest round, which are all under con-tract right now, there were a few that went for$100,000.

“Now we don’t have to do anything more. Theprivate market is working now; it needs nobabysitting.”

Dovetailing with the SCOPE program — unin-tentionally, says Pipik — is Project 5000, the name

given to Mayor Martin O’Malley’s vision toacquire 5,000 derelict properties and turn themaround. O’Malley concedes that some of the prop-erties will need to be demolished or consolidatedwith other properties, but he feels strongly that ifthe city steps in and acquires them for resale, themarket will respond.

Currently, all 5,000 of the flagged propertiesare now coming under the control of the city ofBaltimore, says Pipik. “At least a couple hundredare slated to be sold through the SCOPE program— although that is not our only method for disper-sal. We have a nice ‘pipeline’ of properties; weshould have enough product to continue doingthis through 2007.”

“So far, of the 50-plus houses that have settled,the average sale price was $13,000; the net rev-enue to the city after paying commissions wasabout $550,000,” says Landers.

“For these properties, the city is paying REALTORS® a commission of $2,500 or eight per-cent of the sale price, whichever is greater. Andsince the average sale price for this next batch ofproperties that are under contract and pendingsettlement is $33,000, the city will end up netting

The private market isworking now; it needs no babysitting.


over $1 million. So thecity is ecstatic.

“The REALTORS®

are making the programwork. Every day now Iget calls from other REALTORS® outsidethe area who want to

find out how they can participate in the program. It’sopen to small and large REALTORS®, minority own-ers — everyone has an opportunity to participate. Allthe properties have to go on the Multiple ListingService (MLS), so everyone has an opportunity tosubmit investors and buyers for these properties. It’sbecome completely market-driven.”

Flint on the reboundThe birthplace of General Motors (GM), Flint,

Mich., was a thriving, self-contained economy. In1978 there were 76,000 GM jobs alone.

But as GM lost market share and trimmed itsworkforce over the years, Flint struggled under theblows to its economy. The city went from 193,000residents in 1970 to just under 120,000 today —and 14,000 GM jobs. “So 73,000 people left Flint —and they didn’t take their houses with them! That’ssignificant abandonment,” says Dan Kildee,Genesee County treasurer and the CEO ofMichigan’s First Land Bank.

Genesee County is rounding the corner on theissue — having assimilated itself into the southwestMichigan economy — and is posting improvedhousing-growth numbers.

But the road to recovery was a challenge. Theold tax-foreclosure system allowed private specula-tors to acquire properties through foreclosure, thenallow them to remain vacant and abandoned. “The

problem with abandonment is it’s a contagiousdisease. It infects neighboring properties,” saysKildee.

To fix the problem, Michigan made countytreasurers responsible for tax foreclosures. “In1999 we eliminated private tax-lien speculatorsby rewriting the tax-foreclosure law. The new lawprevented private individuals taking up to sevenyears to foreclose on a property; it allowed thecounty treasurers to foreclose after two years of

unpaid taxes. This created a much more efficientway for the county government to get control ofthese properties.”

But without a better way to then dispose of prop-erties, the new system could potentially have becomesimply a more efficient replica of the old system. “Soin 2002 we formed a Land Bank — a sort of quasi-public entity that acquires, assembles and then dis-poses of vacant and abandoned properties. Weworked toward legislation that formally created aLand Bank Act, which resulted in the most progres-sive Land Bank law in the nation that was signed byour governor in January 2003.

“The Land Bank helps us manage, maintain,and approve tax-foreclosed properties, then dis-pose of that property only when the result of apending sale is a property that makes a contribu-tion to the surrounding properties.”

The next piece of the puzzle was amendments tothe Michigan Brownfield Redevelopment FinancingAct, which were put into place simultaneously withthe introduction of the Land Bank Act and were fullysupported by the Michigan Association of REAL-TORS®. The brownfield act amendments are signifi-cant because they rewrote the definition of a brown-field to include any property owned by a MichiganLand Bank, regardless of the condition or location.The act allows an entire inventory of a Land Bank tobe treated as a single contiguous entity; even thoughthe parcels are scattered around each county, they’relooked at as a single brownfield district. This “clump-ing” approach allowed Kildee to borrow $4.9 millionto clean up all the properties owned by the LandBank.

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) then provided amethod to pay for public improvements — such as


The Land Bank helpsus manage, maintainand approve tax-fore-closed properties.

site preparation, clean-up, etc. — by borrowingmoney and then paying off the loan with taxes gen-erated from the improvements. Under the auspicesof the brownfield act, Genesee County created ascattered-site brownfield TIF district, and used the taxes generated to help clean up all of the properties.

In spring 2003 the clean-up and environmentalremediation work began. Their first project? Amixed-use redevelopment of an abandoneddepartment store in downtown Flint. Empty for 25years and tied up in the old tax-foreclosure sys-tem, the building had 22 different title interests.“It was a nightmare,” says Kildee. “No developerwould undertake that challenge.”

“But with the new act, we took control of it in oneday. It’s a four-story building right on the mainstreet in Flint, literally in the most visible blockdowntown. We foreclosed on it in 2003, put a plantogether, and now we’re a quarter of the waythrough a $3.8 million redevelopment. That build-ing is itself a metaphor for what the Land Bank cando in neighborhoods all around the city.”

The Genesee County approach is similar toBaltimore’s SCOPE program in that REALTORS®

take over after a renovation is complete. “We loveREALTORS®; they’re our sales force,” says Kildee.“It’s especially important to haveREALTORS® who understand theproduct and are willing to work withus on this.”

Jill Freeman, a REALTOR® withRe/Max Town and Country in neighbor-ing Swartz Creek, Mich., sells rehabbedhouses for the Land Bank, as well asnew construction. “The Land Bank ismy most important client. The stuffthey’re putting on the market is topshelf. The properties chosen for renova-tion are rehabbed from top to bottom.They do beautiful work; I haven’t hadany problems selling these homes.They’re beautiful homes and they’revery affordable.

“We’ve had so many promises madeby state government in the past. But

now they’ve removed the red tape so it’s easier toremove eyesores from the community.”

Consider the possibilitiesThe steps that Baltimore and Flint are taking

are progressive and in some ways controversial.Public-private partnerships have been a source ofcontention in the political aisles for some timenow and show no sign of changing.

“You see this metamorphosis being repeatedelsewhere in the country,” says Jody Landers ofthe Greater Baltimore Board of REALTORS®.“There are real benefits to be had from enteringinto partnerships where the private sector makesthe investment of time, resources and expertise,and the public sector comes in to address theproblems of abandoned properties. There are cul-tural differences on both sides of the public andprivate table, but you can work through them ifyou’re willing to compromise.

“The problem of abandoned buildings is mas-sive, but you can do something about it, and themarket can work.”

Jason Miller is a freelance writer, editor and publishingconsultant based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

There are real benefits to be hadfrom entering into

partnerships.



Smart Growth Redo of

Mid-Size Ballpark District, Memphis, Tenn.


REALTORS®, plan-ners, developers and nonprofits are workingtogether to revitalizeurban centers and create attractive Smart Growth neighborhoods

CitiesBy Heidi Johnson-Wright


From Tacoma to Memphis toProvidence and beyond,people are rediscovering

urban living. Yet that doesn’tmean that mid-sized cities don’thave to struggle to compete withthe lure of the suburbs.

REALTORS®, urban plannersand developers are coming upwith plans and incentives to revi-talize urban centers. Frequently,areas experiencing resurgencesare centered on enticements thatlure people back, such as dedi-cated affordable housing, adap-tive reuses of old buildings andbrownfield conversions. These

types of jewels help transform crime-ridden,beleaguered eyesores into attractive, sustainablecommunities.

Today, visitors to Tacoma, Washington’s FossWaterway find a prosperous residential and com-mercial sector, highlighted by Thea’s Landing, asuccessful mixed-use development. Such wasnot always the case.

Before the city of Tacoma acquired theWaterway in 1991, the area was owned by theBurlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. The rail-road leased out parcels dotted with oil tanks andshipping warehouses. The 1970s and 80sbrought an exodus of industrial users, resultingin a blighted brownfield that qualified as aSuperfund site in 1983.

The city saw the Waterway’s potential, acquiredit and invested considerable sums in cleaning itup. Public input via charettes and public hearingshelped craft a community-wide, stakeholder-sup-ported vision, which included the desire for retail,commercial and residential uses.

“The overall waterway development conceptwas approved during an extensive one-and-a-half year citizen review process, where thingslike density, scale, open space and parks wereconsidered,” said Bart Alford, community initia-tives supervisor with the city of Tacoma’sEconomic Development Department.

“Mixed use was key. The city didn’t want justa nine-to-five environment; it wanted actual res-idents living there,” Alford said.

The city was also concerned about ensuringpublic access to the waterway. It held back aband of land — anywhere from 20 to 100 feet inwidth — for public parkways and esplanades.

Tax incentives also played a role in the rede-velopment’s success. The developers benefitedfrom a state program that waived property taxesfor a 10-year period. Developers were also able toapply for up to $10 million in accelerated depre-ciation on buildings they built.

“Thea’s Landing was a pioneering develop-ment for downtown Tacoma. It was risky yetexciting,” said REALTOR® Judy Mayfield, aDesignated Broker for Carino & Associates RealEstate Services, who was the site sales managerfor the Thea’s Landing condos.

“New restaurants, coffee shops, galleries, thenew Tacoma Convention Center, hotels andbanks are popping up throughout downtownTacoma. It is incredible!” Mayfield said.

Thea’s Landing made history as the firstdevelopment to include multi-family, market-rate housing in the neighborhood as well as inTacoma’s downtown core. This has attracted res-idents to the condos and studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments with retail that includes adeli/coffee shop, a martini bar, a florist, anupscale dog supplies store and a frame shop. Theconvenience of local bus service, as well as the

Thea’s Landing, Tacoma, Wash.

nearby commuter train system which connects toa light rail system linking the entire region, arealso draws.

“There was no housing available before indowntown Tacoma; now there’s urban housing,high-end and affordable. The tenants includeyoung professionals, students, military personneland empty nesters, who want to take advantage ofTacoma Opera and other cultural opportunities,”said Angie Lausch, principal and property manag-er for Glacier Management, Inc., which managesThea’s Landing.

Included among these opportunities is theMuseum of Glass, which is connected to down-town Tacoma and its emerging cultural district bya 500-foot-long pedestrian bridge, created byrenowned glass artist and Tacoma native DaleChihuly.

“People have really welcomed the change,”said Lausch, who explained that Tacoma has, inthe past, had a bit of an inferiority complex com-pared to neighboring Seattle.

“Tacoma had always been second to Seattle interms of an urban environment,” she said.

But with its now vibrant downtown and rebornwaterfront, Lausch believes that “Tacoma is com-ing into its own.”

Memphis is best known for the Blues and theKing, but a minor-league baseball stadiumanchored an urban comeback in the city of BealeStreet, Sun Studios and Graceland. Memphis’vibrant urban core that is now home to theRedbirds AAA franchise was once an area fre-quented only by adult movie patrons and down-town workers seeking daytime parking.

Although the downtown had been reboundingsome since 1981 when the historicPeabody Hotel reopened, “(i)t wasthe ballpark that poured jet fuel onthis,” said Frank Ricks. Ricks isprincipal of Looney Ricks Kiss, thearchitects and designers of recordon the ball park project, as well asother projects in the surroundingdistrict, including dense, low-riseapartments, some with ballparkviews.

Initially, Redbirds’ co-founderDean Jernigan wanted to buildthe home for the franchise in thesuburbs. Co-founder and wife,Kristi, pushed instead for down-town Memphis.

“Three factors brought aboutthe turning point,” said CarolColetta, host of public radio talkshow Smart City™ and pres-

ident of Coletta andCompany, a firm thatspecializes in civicproject developmentand execution, processdesign and facilitation,marketing and publicrelations.

“The dynamic cou-ple driving the team(the Jernigans) favoredthe downtown location.The city and countymayors and councilwere behind the deci-sion to locate down-town, so there were no political figuresangling for it to be inthe burbs. And thebusiness communitywas supportive,” said Coletta, who lives in a down-town Memphis loft.

A 25-year property tax freeze and a FederalHistoric Rehabilitation Income Tax Credit helped

Mixed use was key. The city didn’t want just anine-to-five environment;it wanted actual residentsliving there.


Memphis, Tenn.

lower initial development costs. The city andcounty contributed $8.5 million to finance theland purchase. The city also donated in-kind tothe project in terms of infrastructure and relo-cation of utilities. But the lion’s share of theproject’s funding was procured by theJernigans.

“This was an atypical situation. Becausethis was a largely privately-financed project,the public was not an active participant in theprocess,” said Ricks.

That’s not to say that garnering public sup-port didn’t play a role. Since groundbreakingpreceded procurement of all of the financing,Memphisites generally viewed the big muddyhole in the ground that sat fallow for a yearwith skepticism.

A local alternative newspaper sponsored a con-test to suggest how to fill in the hole. One sugges-tion was to “put a group of Elvises in the hole andmake it a tourist attraction,” Coletta said.

Not only is AutoZone Park itself a triumph, but ithas spurred further infill and renovation in thedowntown core. This includes the Peabody Placeentertainment and retail center, a riverfront masterplan and FedExForum, a $250 million basketballarena — also designed by Ricks’ firm — that ishome to the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team.Memphis’ legendary Beale Street runs between thetwo sports centers.

“The ballpark is on the street; right up to thestreet, no setback. In the heart of downtown.There’s a public plaza on the main corner with ahuge oversized ballplayer over the entrance. Theballplayer became a landmark, an icon,” saidColetta.

Ricks’ agrees that the jumboballplayer — dubbed “NostalgiaMan” — has reached iconic status,and contributed to the park becom-

ing something of a “town green for the city.”“The ballpark is a community gathering spot

that the city didn’t have before — that ‘commonplace,’” he said.

In Providence, Rhode Island’s downtown in theearly 1990s, there was no “common place” wherepeople gathered. The classic, old department storeshad closed their doors and the banks moved away.No one was living downtown since virtually no res-idential units were available.

A partnership of forward-thinking business andcivic leaders, however, saw the untapped potential.With the city’s support, they hosted charettestasked with envisioning a new future for the city’sdowntown core known as Downcity.

Community stakeholders and elected officialscame up with a redevelopment plan resulting inrecommendations for urban design, parking and200 residential units needed to support retail busi-


The ballpark is a community gathering spot that the city didn’thave before.

nesses and achieve a level of activity that leads toa self-perpetuating revival.

To provide residential units, redevelopers weremotivated to invest in historically significant prop-erties such as the Alice Building. An architecturaljewel accented with swags, garlands and cornices,it was built in 1898 as a department store. In 1929,it became a mall of small shops. When the build-ing closed in the late 1990s, it had just one tenant.

When the building’s redeveloper, CornishAssociates, L.P., purchased the Alice Building, itcould see the building was perfect for loft styleapartments with first-floor commercial uses.

“When we first explained what we intended todo, people looked at us like we were a little crazy.But public support was generally there early on,”said Douglas Storrs, senior associate at Cornish.

“We convinced the business leaders and keptthem updated on the projects. They invested polit-ical capital and supported us.”

“We negotiated tax stabilization agreementswith the city that set a lower tax rate in the earlyyears of the project. The city gets less revenueearly on, but sparks development,” Storrs said.

The demographics of the Alice Building resi-dents have proven very diverse. They includegraduate students, downtown workers and peoplewho work from home, as well as older folks whohave primary homes outside of Providence, butcome into the city for performing arts and enter-tainment events.

“A significant number of people that live in theAlice Building’s loft units are sole-source propri-etors — lawyers, architects — and use them aslive/work units,” Storrs said.

Storrs is a fan of the federal historic tax program.“It’s a very good program that can be replicat-

ed on the state level. You invest money in thebuilding, and then you receive tax credits. Youthen sell the tax credits to corporations from whichyou receive funding. The State of Rhode Islandhas also adopted a state historic-tax program,” hesaid.

Since Downcity is a designated historic districtand an arts and entertainment district, it attracts acreative community. If an artist produces a productin the district — a painting, a sculpture — and sellsit, he doesn’t have to pay a state sales tax on it.

In a 10-year span, downtown Providence hasexperienced a major renaissance. The AliceBuilding is but one of a group of older, historical-ly-significant buildings to be converted to mixeduse. No longer a blighted area, downtown is athriving urban core with housing, jobs and cultur-al amenities.

The first floor of the Alice Building has com-mercial tenants which include a restaurant that’sa coffee shop in the morning, a sandwich shop atnoon and a jazz club in the evening. There’s alsoa book store and a gallery.

”Within the same block, five buildings have beenredeveloped as mixed-use residential with first-floorcommercial. A sixth is currently in process, whichwill result in the creation of over 200 apartmentunits,” said Stephen Durkee, principal partner withDurkee, Brown, Viveiros & Werenfels, the architectsof record on the Alice Building.

Nearby, other businesses, such as upscalerestaurants and a boutique hotel, have started up.

“Now there are people where there were none.The lights are on. You can just feel the change —a new level of energy. It all started because of thefirst few projects,” said Durkee.

“Now Providence is a ‘24-hour city.’”

Heidi Johnson-Wright frequently writes about SmartGrowth and sustainable communities. She and her hus-band live in a restored historic home in the heart ofMiami’s Little Havana. Contact her at: [email protected].

Now there are people where there were none.You can just feel the change.


The Alice Building, Providence, R.I.


Retailers return to once-

shunned urban neighborhoods

and older suburbs

omebacksommercial

CBy David Goldberg


In the last few years, a veritable stampede ofAmericans has returned to city and older suburbanneighborhoods in search of shorter commutes and fun

things to do, only to spend Saturdays in the place theythought they’d left behind: the newer suburbs.

It turned out that doing a week’s shopping at lower-than-stratospheric prices meant schlepping out to wherethe grocery chains can build their preferred massive foot-prints. To make a run for building supplies or home-lifesundries you had to queue up for the ol’ exit ramp.

For years, the less-than-preferred demographics andphysical constraints of inner-city neighborhoods keptretailers at bay. Residents of older suburbs, meanwhile,saw their options shrink as the strip centers of the 50s,60s and 70s fell out of favor and the chains chased afflu-ence out to the next cornfield. As close-in areas draw newresidents, however, a new generation of mixed-use, high-er-quality shopping environments is starting to emerge.

It’s not happening by accident. Savvy local govern-ments are going after it, realizing that for urban andinner suburban neighborhoods, attracting retail andachieving the right mix of shopping and residential holdthe key to revitalization, stability, walkability and livabil-ity. But for the first time, they’re finding retailers to bereceptive.

From Atlanta, where one of the largest redevelopmentprojects in the city’s history will bring IKEA and a host ofother retailers to the heart of the city, to Chicago, with thefirst multi-story Home Depot, to Washington, D.C. and itsretail renaissance, major retailers have discovered urbanneighborhoods in a major way.

“There are a couple reasons why this is a growing mar-ket,” said Cindy Stewart, director of local governmentrelations for the International Council of ShoppingCenters. “The suburbs are saturated and developers and

St. Louis Park, Minn.

retailers are looking for new markets, and thosereally are old markets that may be undergoing arebirth. And the other is that when you go out to thegreen space there are a lot of growth managementlaws in place that make those projects more diffi-cult to do.”

According to Stewart, the fastest-growing sectorof her retail association’s membership is in the pub-lic and nonprofit sectors — local governments andcommunity organizations working on commercialrestoration. In addition to larger cities, many ofthem are older suburbs trying to redevelop stripcorridors not just as a place to shop, but as a placeto be: mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods with aMain Street feel.

Below, we visit four places with interestingtwists on the retail revitalization story: Washington,D.C., a large city that partnered with business tocreate a marketing center that is drawing retailback to revitalize neighborhoods that have beenwoefully under served; Fruitvale Transit Village in

Oakland, CA, where a nonprofit, community-basedorganization in a large city has taken the lead inrevitalizing a commercial corridor; St. Louis Park,MN, an inner-suburban city that created a visionfor a new town center and hired a retail developerto pull it off; and Baltimore County, MD, a subur-banized county that has created an innovative pro-gram to redevelop its aging commercial corridorsinto revitalized mixed-use centers, putting commu-nity participation at the fore.

Washington, D.C.: Retail revitalization in Columbia Heights

In many ways, Washington, D.C. is a clear suc-cess story. The capital city has stopped its popula-tion loss, with 41,000 housing units built or added to the construction pipeline since 2001 andmany formerly-distressed neighborhoods on theupswing. Still, city officials found that the popula-tion remained somewhat transient, in large partbecause basic goods and services continued to lagbehind. Attracting retail, then, has become a criti-cal means of stabilizing those neighborhoods andmaking them lively and livable.

That led Mayor Anthony Williams and a partner-ship of D.C. business players to create theWashington, D.C. Marketing Center, whose job ithas been to lure back skeptical retailers, saidMichael Stevens, the center’s CEO. After meetingwith industry representatives, the public-private

The suburbs are saturated and developersand retailers are lookingfor new markets.




nonprofit built a huge database, he added. “Wecompiled all the retail opportunities into a singleresource, and posted them on our Web site. Wehave profile sheets, one page front and back, withcontact people, maps and photos for 39 neighbor-hood clusters and 128 neighborhoods. We knowthe demographics and traffic counts.”

Even that wasn’t enough when it came to mar-keting a neighborhood such as Columbia Heights.The Census and other conventional market analy-ses still showed it to be a bad bet for business.That’s when Stevens brought in Social Compact, anonprofit that performs “drill down” analysis togauge the true buying power of urban neighbor-hoods.

“The neighborhood, because of the populationdensity, had a tremendous amount to offer in buy-ing power because it wasn’t adequately served,”said Karin Ottesen, president of Social Compact.The analysis found that the neighborhood hadthousands more households and neighborhoodsthan the Census counted, and way more dispos-able income than anyone imagined. Less than athird of the aggregate buying power of the 78,000residents was being spent locally, meaning that$424 million each year was being spent outsidethe Columbia Heights market.

That information helped the city put together adeal to build Tivoli Square at the corner of 14thStreet and Park Road. The project includes a GiantFoods — an urban rarity at 53,000 square feet —and the restoration of the classic and long-dor-mant Tivoli Theater. An additional 25,000 squarefeet of shops are lining 14th St., and 28,000 squarefeet of office space occupies floors above.

Tivoli Square so changed the tenor of the retailenvironment that the area has attracted the largestretail project in D.C., which will mix regional andnational retailers, such as Target and Bed Bathand Beyond. Soon to begin construction, the465,000 square-foot project will include restau-rants and a health club.

For more information, please see: http://dcmar-ketingcenter.com.

Oakland, Calif.: The Fruitvale Transit VillageAt one point in Oakland’s heyday, the Fruitvale

district’s International Boulevard was the equiva-lent of a second downtown. But that all began tochange when a rash of highway building drainedmuch of the population to the suburbs, saidArabella Martinez, the recently retired head of thedistrict’s Spanish-speaking Unity Council.

By the early 1990s, when Martinez had

The cosmetic improvements [in Fruitvale] createdthe impression that things were happening.

Fruitvale Transit Village, Oakland, Calif.

returned from a stint in the federal government,“Fruitvale had become a very unattractive neigh-borhood and it was just filthy dirty,” she said.Having founded the Unity Council in the 1960s topromote Latino opportunity throughout the BayArea, she found the organization’s own neighbor-hood so benighted that she felt compelled to makea cause of its resurrection.

“As a first step, we decided that we absolutelyhad to change the commercial district,” she said.Not only was International Boulevard dilapidated,but the district was getting little benefit from anearby BART rail station that was unconnected tothe commercial district and surrounded by nothingbut parking. To make matters worse, BART wasplanning yet more parking in a poorly-conceivedgarage.

The Unity Council rallied the community todemand something better and have a say in whatthat might be. After the numerous community ses-sions, the Unity Council decided to try to develop atransit village on BART’s parking lot. Martinez’sgroup reasoned that a plaza lined with appealingshops and restaurants, designed to serve both theneighborhood and transit commuters, would bothlink the commercial district to the transit stationand provide a venue for community festivals. Theaddition of housing units would help add life andcustomers to the streets, and planned office spacewould bring jobs to the district.

But few officials and lenders would believe theproject had a chance until International Boulevarditself began to get the facade and streetscape

improvements that had been recommended by a uni-versity study team. “The cosmetic improvements cre-ated the impression that things were happening, thatthe area was on the upswing,” Martinez said. Inaddition, a business improvement district was creat-ed to pay for street cleaning, monitor crime, policeliquor outlets and remove graffiti.

In order to assure lenders of anchor tenants, theUnity Council arranged to move their own officesand several other community-service organizationsinto the office space. Negotiating the parking inorder to replace BART slots and serve the storesand offices proved another lengthy and difficultprocess, Martinez said.

Picking the right mix of retail also was impor-tant, and required community input. Restaurantscame first, in part because they draw people to thestreets at night, when visitors feel less secure. “Weallocated only 20 percent of space for nationalchains,” Martinez said. “There were enough fast-food restaurants in Fruitvale.”

Today, with the phased construction all but com-plete, the area has been transformed. “You seetremendous numbers of people shopping, and youdon’t see all the security bars on the storefronts.The district went from a vacancy rate of about 40percent in 1990 to one percent now.”

“All evidence is that the strategy to focus on theretail worked,” Martinez said. “I have to say, I’mliving my dream.”

For more information, please see:http://www.fruitvalevillage.net/ or http://www.uni-tycouncil.org/transitvillage.html.


The district went from a vacancy rate of about40 percent in 1990 to one percent now.


Baltimore County: The RenaissanceRedevelopment Pilot Program

Like a lot of suburban areas that mushroomedafter World War II, Baltimore County, MD ispocked with over-the-hill commercial corridorsthat can’t compete with newer developments eat-ing their way into the county’s much-loved coun-tryside. As County Executive Jim Smith sees it,that dynamic has to change in a hurry.

“I don’t think our county can thrive without arenaissance of the older neighborhoods and localbusiness districts in the beltway communitiesalong I-695,” said Smith. At the same time, con-ventional development is not creating the futureresidents want, he added.

“Walkable, mixed-use communities are some-thing that a lot of people want. But our conven-tional suburban zoning is not set up to give themthat,” Smith said. “I know that it is more expen-sive and difficult to develop in older areas than ina lush, green cornfield. Therefore I knew we weregoing to have to have incentives to attract busi-ness to these places.”

Enter the Renaissance Redevelopment PilotProgram. Established earlier this year after morethan a year of public discussion, the program setsup “opportunity areas” where developers are free

to mix retail and residential without navigatingdozens of regulatory hurdles. The catch — thoughit’s more likely an advantage — is that the devel-oper’s master plan has to be developed through aseven- to 14-day charette, a public design work-shop whose end product becomes the official tem-plate for the project. Plans also are to be accompa-nied by a “pattern book” that establishes thedesign features that the community and develop-ers agree they’d like to see.

“We have to have a way where the developersand communities can come together early and col-laborate on a vision for a particular site,” Smithsaid. “The developer can then move forward, andthe community can believe that the plan they’veworked on will be built.” Under the enabling leg-islation, the plan must be approved by 80 percentof participants in at least two charette sessions.Those can include any interested citizen, as wellas the development and design teams.

Though the program is still too new to havegenerated its first project, the county recognizesdevelopers are likely to need other incentivesbeyond liberalized zoning rules. The Renaissanceprogram will be augmented by other strategies,including tax abatement and redevelopmentgrants, and potentially, the county’s first use of tax

People really wanted to have a place in their community where they could go and

just hang out, a real town center.

Baltimore County, Md.


What’s really attracting people to live there is themix of retail, because that enhances their lives.increment financing. All are likely to be necessaryto rejuvenate aging strip corridors, said deputyplanning commissioner, Jackie MacMillan. “Youcan only upgrade strip centers so many times. Thecounty has a number of shopping centers that arevery under-used or completely abandoned. So wehave all this under-used land, and we have to finda better way to use that.”

For more on the program, please visit: http://www.co.ba.md.us/Agencies/planning/renaissance/index.html.

St. Louis Park, MN: A new town center at Excelsior & Grand

Though it was born as a streetcar suburb ofMinneapolis, for most of its life St. Louis Park hashad a drive-through downtown. The town of44,000, located seven miles west of downtownMinneapolis did most of its growing in the decadesafter World War II, and grew mostly houses andstrip centers along corridors such as Highway 100.By the early 1990s, when the main commercialstrip had declined to a collection of pawnshops,check-cashing storefronts and barely solvent retail-ers, the city fathers and mothers decided it washigh time for a downtown.

“People really wanted to have a place in theircommunity where they could go and just hang out,a real town center,” said Richard McLaughlin, the

architect and town planner who in 1996 conductedone of the first public-design workshops for thearea around the intersection of Excelsior Boulevardand Highway 100. From that exercise emerged theconcept of a shopping district surrounding a towngreen, with housing options included. St. LouisPark began piecing together 16 acres for redevel-opment and put out a call for interested developers.

To their disappointment, they found very littleexpertise in combining retail, civic uses and hous-ing. Their first developer, a mass-production home-builder, could not figure out how to make the proj-ect work, even after scaling back the town greenand removing the proposed civic building.

In 2000 the city hired TOLD DevelopmentCompany, which was experienced in retail andredevelopment, but not residential. But the devel-oper was convinced that getting the retail atmos-phere right would be the key to success, said TOLDPrincipal Bob Cunningham. They pushed ahead,breaking ground just after 9/11 on 100,000 squarefeet of retail and an eventual 660 housing units.Their faith paid off, Cunningham said.

“What’s really attracting people to live there isthe mix of retail, because that enhances theirlives,” Cunningham said. “We’ve built 338 apart-ments; we’ve never dropped below about 94 per-cent occupancy. We finished 124 condos justrecently and there are only two units left.” The



retail is a mix between locally-owned and nationalchains. It includes a daycare, a Pier One store, a pairof sit-down restaurants, a fast-food Mexican restau-rant, Panera Bread Company, Starbucks and locally-owned boutiques.

The key to the project was the town’s willingnessto assist in building structured parking and allowingless of it because some could be shared among uses.The city also used tax-increment financing to helppay for the town green and streetscapes, includingbrick pavers for sidewalks. Financing was perhapsthe trickiest part, TOLD said. “Lenders are stilleither apartment, condo or retail lenders. Most don’tdo mixed use. But this is a product type whose timehas come. They’ll get it and jump on the bandwag-on, they’re just not there in force yet.”

For more, please see: http://www.excelsiorand-grand.com/main.html or http://www.stlouispark.org.

David A. Goldberg is the communications director forSmart Growth America, a nationwide coalition based in Washington, D.C. that advocates for land-use policyreform. In 2002, Mr. Goldberg was awarded a LoebFellowship at Harvard University where he studied urban policy.

RETAIL IN THE CITY: SOME TIPS FOR GETTING IT — As head of theWashington, D.C. Marketing Center, Michael Stevens has been instru-mental in luring retail back to the city’s underserved neighborhoods. Hereare his tips for other communities:

• First of all, local executives and council have to buy in. It takesmoney, other resources and human capital.

• You need an organization that will be the information clearinghouseand first point of contact for retailers. Caution: Creating it isn’t easy.

• Develop a retail attraction plan: Do you need grocery-anchored ordepartment-store-anchored centers, or neighborhood corridors?

• Retailers are looking for a deal. Incentives: Land, tenant finish-outfunds (we use TIF funds); tax abatements; and/or job training fundsfor local residents.

• Identify and market your opportunities: Suburban markets have afinite number of sites now and there is a backlash against “big box.”

• Cities need to know: True household income in neighborhoods,what’s really being spent in the cash economy, accurate populationcounts and aggregate buying power.

A NEW RETAIL DOCTRINE — Though change has been building for sev-eral years, one of the strongest signals yet of a fundamental shift in retaildoctrine came in a session of the International Council of ShoppingCenters last December. It was there that Robert Stoker, senior real estatemanager for Wal-Mart, declared that, “We’ve reached a stage where wecan be flexible. We no longer have to build a gray-blue battleship box.”

Wal-Mart is not alone, of course, either in its new willingness to adaptto more urban environments or in its long resistance to veering from a for-mula that has held since the 1960s: A single-story building on a majorarterial road surrounded by asphalt.

“In 1960, if you had 200,000 square feet of retail, it would have afootprint of about one acre in a multi-story building,” said Ed McMahon,a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute who has written several arti-

cles on commercial design trends. “Until very recently, that same200,000 feet would be in one story and cover three to four acres, front-ed by 20 acres of parking.”

With many suburbs saturated with “big box” and other retail, we’re nowseeing two divergent trends, experts said. In the low-density exurbs, thenew stores and their parking lots are larger than ever so as to drawmotorists from many miles around. At the same time, retailers now seethe virtue of high-density markets with plenty of customers close at hand.But capturing it requires resurrecting and updating the designs from theearliest days of department stores — multi-story stores in buildings withlocally-compatible architecture.

Target stores were among the earliest to adapt. The company’s flagshipstore in Minneapolis is four stories, and the chain has two-story storeswith structured parking in Atlanta, Gaithersburg, Md. and several otherplaces. Home Depot recently opened a three-story in downtown Chicago.Wal-Mart itself as a two-story store in a mixed-use setting in Long Beach,Calif. and will occupy two floors of a mixed-use high-rise in Rego, N.Y.

Mixed-use, urban projects are popping up all over these days, saidCindy Stewart, director of local government relations for the ICSC. “Youstill see lifestyle and power centers, but retailers going after that urbanmarket are going into projects that also have housing, because there’ssuch a strong need for both.” Being part of a neighborhood raises trig-gers, a range of design considerations from architecture to placement ofloading docks to masking the parking decks.

But it can be worth it: Foot for foot, urban stores often out perform theirsuburban counterparts, Stewart and others said. Increasingly, retailersare recognizing what McMahon calls the place-making dividend: “Peoplewill stay longer and spend more money in places that actually earn theiraffection,” he said.

“Strip shopping centers are retail for the last century,” McMahonadded, “and mixed use is the retail environment for this century.”


Andrea Floriman was born in the Dominican Republic. Herhusband grew up in Honduras. When they searched for ahome for themselves and their three children in the greater

Washington, D.C. metropolis, they focused on Arlington County,Virginia.

Residing in its charming 3-bed, 2-bath home for less than a year,the Hispanic-American family matches a trend that is happening allover large-population centers in the U.S. Immigrant populationsare settling in first-ring suburbs that offer the best of both worlds fordiverse populations.

While empty nesters and hipsters are gobbling up expensiveunits in high rises and lofts in the core city, and young families areaccepting hour and longer commutes to buy a new home in far-flung exurbia, many immigrant families are choosing the inner-ringsuburbs.

“Buying our house was the most incredible experience we haveever had,” said Floriman, whose family purchased a below-market-cost house through AHC, a non-profit developer of low- and moder-ate-income housing in the Beltway area. “We never dreamed we’dget to be homeowners in Arlington. We had the option of buying ahouse way out in West Virginia — some people live way out forcheaper housing — but we wanted to be right here in the center ofeverything.”

In Arlington, Virginia, a tiny urban county of fewer than 200,000,the foreign-born population leaped by 44 percent between the 1990and 2000 census.

IDI Group, an Arlington company that typically builds luxuryhigh rises, is working hard to serve the blue collar, Spanish-speak-ing population in an apartment complex it is converting to condo-miniums.

in the in the New Life New Life


reviving older, inner-ring suburbsBy Steve Wright

Old Burbs Old BurbsDiverse home buyers are

reviving older, inner-ring suburbsDiverse home buyers are


IDI purchased a 58-unit, low-rise,1950s apartment complex inhabited almost entirelyby Hispanic-Americans who work in greater D.C.’sindustries. The company has packaged county andstate programs with its own incentives to turn pres-ent renters into condo owners for only $2,000 dol-lars out of pocket in one of the most expensivehousing markets in the country.

The combination of below-market first mort-gages, low-interest second mortgages, principal-payback-only third mortgages — plus a pre-con-version discount of $20,000 off the purchase pricefor renters who buy the unit they’re living in — will

create a cluster of workforce housing.“Everybody talks about affordable housing, but

almost nobody is doing anything about it,” saidHeller, the assistant to the president of IDI. “Withthe price of land in the inner ring, it is very difficultto deliver an affordable product for immigrants andothers who provide the workforce to support ourbusiness, government, airport, etc.”

While some minority and immigrant home buy-ers take advantage of affordable housing programs,many more go the “market-rate” route and find andpurchase a home by working with a real estateagent. And for many of these buyers, the place ofchoice for their home purchase is the older suburbsof major cities.

Joel Kotkin, a California-based writer and con-sultant who is an internationally-recognizedauthority on global, economic, political and socialtrends, observed this ethnic trend to the old-growthsuburbs several years ago.

“A lot of these folks still have strong ties to thecenter city — they have places of worship there,they have jobs there, they own a small businessdowntown. The inner-ring suburb provides goodhousing stock, decent home prices and easy accessto the central city,” he said.

Kotkin said diverse buyers are turning some for-merly-boring bedroom communities into placesthat are more urban and exciting.

“These streetcar suburbs were built with quaintdowntowns, nice backyards, beautiful houses. Theyoften have much more character than the outer-

The inner-ring suburbprovides good housing

stock, decent homeprices and easy access

to the central city.


ring suburbs. In LA, you don’t get the best Indianor Thai food downtown, you find it in ethnicenclaves in the older suburbs.”

Huntington Park is exactly the kind of suburbthat has seen a huge population shift in the pastfew decades. Founded in 1906, the town grew upsoutheast of Los Angeles because the PacificElectric Railway extended its line there at the turnof the century.

Until the 1960s, Huntington Park was primari-ly populated by whites, said Jack Wong, a LosAngeles-based urban consultant who served asthe city’s Community Development Director for16 years.

But the nearby Watts riots caused many originalresidents to move during the turbulent 60s andvirtually all the non-Hispanic whites left the cityafter the Rodney King riots happened not far fromthe city in the early 1990s.

“Where there once werevacant storefronts andunsold homes, the Hispanicmerchants occupied thevacant storefronts andHispanic residents rentedand purchased the apart-ments and homes,” Wongsaid.

Realtor Jessica Maesbecame the first Hispanicand first female mayor ofHuntington Park in the late1990s. She has seen a lot ofeconomic stability come tothe city where more than 95percent of the 60,000-plusresidents are Hispanic.

She said affordable hous-ing, a local government rep-resentative of the populationand proximity of a half-hourdrive or even shorter trainride to the center of LosAngeles has madeHuntington Park popularwith people of Mexican,Peruvian, Salvadoran,

Venezuelan and other Latino heritages.“With Hispanic homebuyers, you rarely see

foreclosures. Families are close knit and no onewould allow a relative to lose a house. Everyonewould chip in to save it during a tough time andthe person who benefited would do the same forthem when he is back on his feet,” said Maes, whowas born in the U.S. to Mexican-American par-ents and whose husband was born in Mexico.

These streetcar suburbsoften have much more

character than theouter-ring suburbs.


In historic Quincy, Mass., arapidly-growing Asian-Americanpopulation is turning abandonedretail strips into bustling market-places and taking neglectedhousing stock with good bonesand restoring it into residencesworthy of a bygone era.

“In the last decade and a half,there has been a 150-percentincrease in the Asian population— the city of Quincy even has afulltime liaison to the Asian com-munity,” said Dean Rizzo, execu-tive director of the nonprofit eco-nomic development corporation.“Quincy is a town where Chineselike to move because of our goodtransit system — it’s only 15 min-utes by train to Boston’sChinatown, the city is convenientto everything. The South Shorebusinesses have difficulty com-peting with suburban malls andbig-box retail, so there is oppor-tunity in vacant properties forAsian restaurants, shops andmarkets.

“For many immigrants, thefirst place to settle is in Bostonproper — Chinatown. But thenext move is to save up money tobuy a house in Quincy, where thehousing price is affordable and

A rapidly-growing Asian-Americanpopulation is turning

abandoned retail strips into bustling marketplaces.


you don’t need a car because there are two excel-lent transit stops,” said Betty Kit-Fong Yau, anative of Hong Kong who has lived in Quincy formore than two decades.

Yau, a community activist, marketing profes-sional and host of a program on Boston ChineseRadio, said immigrants flock to Quincy because itis close to places of worship in Chinatown and it isbetter to commute by transit to Chinatown than todrive there, because there is very little parking inthe Chinatown area and what is availableis very expensive.

“The town is very good about receivingminorities, outsiders. Quincy is a veryaccepting area to Asian people,” she saidof the city of less than 100,000 that is bestknown for its history and its behemoth of ashipyard that used to employ tens of thou-sands in its heyday.

In South Florida, the city of NorthMiami has become the first city inAmerica where the majority of elected offi-cials — the mayor and two of four councilmembers — is Haitian-American.

North Miami developed overnight inthe great Miami-area land boom of the1920s. For decades, the city remained aninner-ring suburb of Miami to the south.Most of the population was Anglo.

Because of governmental and econom-ic instability, tens of thousands of Haitianpeople moved to Miami from the early1980s through the present. Little Haiti,emotional and spiritual center of Miami’sHaitian Community, is located only fivemiles south of the suburb of North Miami.

Jean Monestime, a Haitian-American,is president of MJM Capital Realty inNorth Miami, where he also serves as acity councilman. He said as immigrants get aneconomic foothold, they move from renting inLittle Haiti to buying in North Miami.

“In the past couple decades, North Miami’saffordable business and residential corridorsbecame very popular with Haitian entrepreneursseeking inexpensive commercial space and fami-lies seeking modest suburban homes of good con-struction. Today, nearly one third of its 60,000 pop-ulation is of Haitian descent.

“Haitian-Americans bought into the idea of theAmerican dream and they see it in terms of homeownership being one of the biggest accomplish-ments in a family’s life,” said Monestime, whoworked his way through college until he earnedan MBA and opened his own full-service realestate firm.

The city of North Miami is working hard to cre-

ate an arts district of galleries, restaurants,nightlife and more to its former mainstreet. Torestore an aging business corridor into a vibrantarea and to take advantage of a renowned contem-porary art center in its downtown, the city has cre-ated incentives to lure arts-based businesses to itsself-dubbed “NoMi Arts District.

“North Miami is attractive because of smaller,more affordable homes in proximity to Little Haiti.When they buy a home, they don’t want to be too

far from Little Haiti’s churches and culture,” saidMonestime, who is working to boost the NoMidistrict.

“Many Haitian people are working in MiamiBeach, downtown Miami or South BrowardCounty and North Miami is within close proximi-ty to all those employment centers,” he added.“This community is close to those jobs and theHaitian churches and at the same time it offersbetter schools for their children. Now they evenhave local representation, with seven Haitian-Americans serving them between city, county andstate government.”

Steve Wright frequently writes about Smart Growth andsustainable communities. He and his wife live in arestored historic home in the heart of Miami’s LittleHavana. Contact him at: [email protected]

Home ownership is one of thebiggest accomplishments in afamily’s life.


ALL ABOARD!STREETCARS LEAD THE WAY TO NEIGHBORHOOD REINVESTMENTBy Christine Jordan Sexton


ll aboard’’ may be the new clarion call for American cities eager to revitalize their downtowns. That’sbecause city planners and officials are discovering that streetcars are the most desirous and efficient wayto help move people in and around urban cores.

From Portland’s trendy Pearl District to Little Rock in America’s heartland to Tampa’s historic YborCity, streetcars, with their rhythmic clang, clang, clang, are making a comeback. They are helping toredevelop and revitalize downtowns all across America that just 20 years ago were losing population andeconomic development opportunities to the sprawling suburbs.

Streetcars are rail transit vehicles designed for local transportation powered by electricity receivedfrom an overhead wire and trolley pull, hence the term “trolley.” They operate in the downtown and asmidge beyond it, picking up and dropping off passengers at almost every street corner.

“A

Eighty cities in 37 states have shown an interestin developing or expanding their streetcar systemas an alternative to new roads, according toCongressman Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat fromOregon who is pushing to have a new funding pro-gram called Small Starts for smaller mass transitprojects in an overhaul of the federal transportationpackage.

Charles Hales, national director of transit devel-opment with the consulting firm HDR, says street-cars are appealing for many reasons, not the leastof which is they are an option for all cities becausethe costs of building and operating streetcars islower than any other form of rail transportation.

“Maybe you have to be Atlanta or WashingtonD.C. to think big and heavy or Denver orMinneapolis to think light rail, but there are lots ofsmaller cities that would just be fantasizing aboutlight rail that can realistically think about a street-car system,” said Hales.

Additionally, while buses often are used by thetransit dependent, rail service attracts those whocould drive, but choose not to. Getting a driver tojump on a trolley means there’s one less car con-

gesting streets.Virtually all

towns and citieshad streetcars inthe early 20th cen-tury. As Americansbecame more afflu-ent during the eco-nomic boom follow-ing World War II, they started buying more automo-biles. They also started moving out to the suburbs,which offered them bigger houses and bigger yardswhere their children could safely play.

Dovetailing with this trend to leave the city wasa movement by transit officials across the nation tobegin advocating the use of buses, which were lessexpensive to bring on line because they didn’t runon tracks, hence the demise of the streetcar.

Portland launched its streetcar system in 2001and is the only city to use modern streetcars in thatthey don’t resemble antique designs. The trolleysare designed to fit the scale and traffic patterns ofthe city and are integrated with the city’s othermass-transit options, which includes the city’sMAX Light Rail System. Unlike trolleys, light raillines can operate beyond the downtown and run atincreased speeds between stations that are setmore than a mile apart.

The Portland streetcar meanders through a 4.8mile loop from Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital inNorthwest Portland through the Pearl District and


The trolleys are designedto fit the scale and traffic

patterns of the city.

Tampa, Fla.


onto the campus of Portland State University. Thestreetcars averaged 6,320 daily rides each week-day last winter and 6,100 weekend rides eachweekend.

Thanks to Portland’s success there are nowmore than 80 cities in 37 states that have shownan interest in either developing or expandingstreetcars, including Miami, Fla., which is exam-ining the merits of connecting downtown Miamito “Midtown Miami,” a 56-acre developmentplanned for Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood justnorth of the Performing Arts Center.

Portland’s city-owned and city-operated street-car cost about $55 million to construct but hashelped generate about $1.5 billion in redevelop-ment in the downtown core, according to Hales,who describes the project as “the most successfulmunicipal investment in the United States. Noother investment has paid off that handsomely.”

The Portland streetcar was included in part ofthe city’s growth management strategy, which was

to create 15,000 new housing units and 75,000new jobs in the urban core. The city used rail tohelp direct redevelopment dollars on two largeparcels of land near the central city, one of whichwas a former railroad yard.

Instead of developing the land into officespace, developers working with city officialsdecided to build new medium- to high-density

Thanks to Portland’s successthere are now more than 80 cities in 37 states thathave shown an interest ineither developing orexpanding streetcars.

Portland, Ore.

housing and to use the streetcar as the transit toolto take people from their homes to work.

Hales said the development community workedclosely with the streetcar initiative, agreeing to vol-untarily tax itself. The real estate tax equals about$2 per square foot of land. While paying increasedtaxes isn’t something anybody wants, Hales said,real estate along the trolley line has gone up invalue 50 percent more than similar properties thatare not on the streetcar line.

“These people have gotten the deal of the century.We could have taxed them five times higher than

what we did and they still would have gotten a won-derful rate of return on their property,” he said.

Portland REALTOR® and ReMax Hall of FameProducer John Cooper agrees. He says his clientsenjoy the Pearl District because of the varied trans-portation options which make the area very livable.“I don’t know if people use it,” Cooper said of thetrolley “but they sure like the idea of being able towalk out and get on the streetcar that’s going by.”

Central Arkansas Transit Authority launched its$20 million streetcar project called River Rail inNovember 2004. It runs 2.5 miles between Little

The development community worked closely with the streetcar initiative, agreeing

to voluntarily tax itself.



Rock and North Little Rock through the river dis-trict, taking riders to Alltell Arena, the RiverMarket, the Argenta neighborhood and HistoricArkansas Museum, among other places.

A nine-tenths of a mile expansion which wouldallow the trolley to go to the Clinton PresidentialLibrary is slated to be completed by February 2006.Ridership there has exceeded projections, accordingto Central Arkansas Transit Authority officials, andwill top the 80,000 mark during the first year ofoperations. Two additional Heritage trolleys, whichresemble vintage streetcars, have had to be orderedto help meet the demand in Little Rock.

Meanwhile, Tampa introduced its TECO street-car in October 2002 as a way to shuttle people,mostly tourists, along a route that runs from thehistoric Latin quarter known as Ybor City to thecity’s downtown and the burgeoning ChannelDistrict. One of the stops includes the arena that is

home to the city’s NationalHockey League franchise.

The 2.5 miles of track, alongwith the costs of the Heritagestreetcars, were about $35 millionto construct. Unlike Portlandstreetcars, which travel with trafficin the street, the Tampa streetcarshave their own right of way.

The Tampa route starts in YborCity, which looks much as it did atthe turn of the 20th Century whenit was a cigar-manufacturing hub.Ybor is just northeast of downtownTampa and has been a hotbed ofeconomic development, with $200million plus in public and privateinvestments being funneled intothe area. Its population grew by42.5 percent between 2000 and2003 and over the next 20 years itis expected to grow by 172 newresidents and 105 new housingunits annually.

The Channel District, which isjust south of downtown, served asa cargo warehouse area for theTampa Port Authority (TPA).However, the TPA’s decision toshift activities in the area fromwarehousing to cruise lines helpedfree up land. Recognizing itsvalue, the TPA worked with pri-vate companies to redevelop thearea. Since the trolley appeared in2002, there has been more than$230 million in announced resi-dential lofts and condominiums.

The Channel District area also has a $49 mil-lion entertainment complex called Channelside.Paul Yares, marketing and business developmentdirector for Tampa Downtown Partnership, saidwhen Channelside initially opened in 2001 it hada lower-than-expected occupancy. After theappearance of the trolley, which stops directly infront of Channelside, the number of tenants in thecommercial building increased significantly.

Hillsborough Transit Authority Public RelationsDirector Jill Cappadoro said the plan is to eventu-ally have the TECO Street Trolley — which shut-tled 425,000 people in 2004 — run upward of 10miles. The trolley attracts development dollars,she said, because the streetcars must run on track,which means there is a permanent commitment tothe line.

The streetcar has brought more than develop-ment to the area, though. Cappadoro said YborCity and the Channel District once competed fortourists and the money they brought into the area.

“Today, we are all sitting together at the tableand promoting ourselves as one destinationbecause the streetcar connects us all.”

Christine Jordan Sexton is a Tallahassee-based free-lance reporter who has done correspondent work for theAssociated Press, the New York Times, Florida MedicalBusiness and a variety of trade magazines, includingFlorida Lawyer and National Underwriter.

Today, we are promotingourselves as one destinationbecause the streetcar connects us all.


smartGrowthinthestates

In acknowledgment of widespreadconcerns that poor and minorityneighborhoods lack sufficient protec-tion from industrial pollution, theAlabama Senate Energy and NaturalResources Committee voted for an‘’environmental justice’’ bill, whichwould require the AlabamaDepartment of EnvironmentalManagement (ADEM) to check thelevel of all pollutants affecting ‘’sub-populations’’ within a half-mile, onemile and three miles of any plantseeking a pollution permit or itschange or renewal. The bill definessubpopulations as clusters of residentswho make less than $15,000 a year orhave other than the majority race,color or national origin. ShouldADEM find their local pollution high-er than elsewhere in the same county,a plant would have to ensure reme-dies or its permit request would bedenied. The bill would also requireADEM to create an EnvironmentalJustice Division in place of its currentprogram.

California Business, Housing andTransportation Secretary Sunne McPeakasked San Jose to plan an additional60,000 housing units, about half in stillunder-developed areas, making clearthat the state would help the city meet itsSmart Growth goals of urban and tran-sit-oriented development and conse-quently release the $760 million it prom-ised in 2000 for a BART line extensionfrom Fremont to Santa Clara and SanJose, some 18 miles south. Addressingthe area’s housing summit in SantaClara, the secretary voiced strong sup-port for legislation to make the state’saffordable-housing push more effective,and indicated that planning for morehousing could change the recentFederal Transit Administration’s opinionthat the proposed San Jose line wouldn’thave enough riders to warrant about $1billion in federal aid. After the secre-tary’s speech, San Jose Mayor RonGonzales expressed confidence that thecity’s ‘’housing plans in terms of SmartGrowth are going to meet and exceedany others in terms of the communitysupporting BART.’’

ALABAMA CALIFORNIA

Compiled by Gerald L. Allen, NAR Government Affairs

Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO)will spend $48 million to help pre-serve large land parcels through-out the state, including the 55,000-acre Laramie Foothills/Mountainto Plains Project. The foothills proj-ect received $11.5 million fromGOCO, enough money to com-plete several key transactions,including the purchase of the sce-nic Red Mountain Ranch. In addi-tion to the funds provided byGOCO, Fort Collins, LarimerCounty and the NatureConservancy, among others, havealready committed $13.7 milliontoward the giant effort. The landcovers 200 square-miles ofuntouched plains, prairie grassesand natural rock formations northof Fort Collins between U.S. 287and Interstate 25, stretching up tothe Wyoming border. GOCO wascreated in 2001 by voters in thestate to protect Colorado’s rapidlydwindling open spaces from popu-lation pressures.

COLORADO


Car sharing is becoming a popularalternative in dealing with the traffic-plagued and parking-shortWashington, D.C. region. Washington,D.C. is the nation’s only area wheretwo car-share companies (Flexcar andZipcar) compete, and the market forboth companies has exploded in thelast four years, with more than 14,000members so far; almost half of themsigned up last year. Both companiesprovide a fleet of cars for a monthlyusage fee that includes the cost of gas,insurance and maintenance. Bothcompanies have cars parked in desig-nated neighborhood spots, which canbe reserved by phone or online for ahalf-hour and up. The sharing planshave proved so popular that local gov-ernments in the region, includingArlington County and the city ofAlexandria in Virginia, are providing20 pick-up-drop-off spots near Metrosubway stations and are planning toadd more this year, even though someobject to giving prime public parkingspaces throughout the region to pri-vate businesses.

Oakland Park is using grants,tax revenue and an $18.5 mil-lion loan from the FloridaLeague of Cities to transformthe area’s 150-acre centralbusiness district from an indus-trial wasteland into a thriving,around-the-clock “Main Street”,with apartments above shops,tree-shaded sidewalks and out-door cafes. New regulationsand design guidelines willmake builders comply with the“Main Street” plans and sharecosts for public amenities. Onedeveloper plans to transform anold Sears warehouse site whichhe purchased four years agointo 300 townhouses, condosand lofts.

FLORIDADISTRICT OFCOLUMBIA

After the Westborough PlanningBoard rejected a developer’s offer of13.7 acres for open space as insuffi-cient to allow higher density for aplanned 300-unit condo village at apost-industrial tract across from theMTBA commuter rail station, heoffered the town a 24-acre sitemuch better suited to its needs, thistime gaining full support from the advisory Open Space PreservationCommittee (OSPC). The new sitemeets all 11 OSPC criteria, includ-ing ecological and habitat value,recreational and development pos-sibilities and relation to other natu-ral and wildlife areas. Under thetown’s Transit Oriented Village(TOV) Smart Growth bylaw, whichlets the Planning Board grant densi-ty bonuses up to 10 units per acre,the developer could be allowed tobuild 240 more units on his tractnear the train station.

MASSACHUSETTS


Ramsey, Minnesota, some 20 milesnorthwest of central Minneapolis, isembarking on construction of a 322-acre, mixed-use and high-density TownCenter, which will offer 2,300 variedhousing units, 700,000 square feet ofretail, 460,000 square feet of offices and26 acres of plazas, parks, trails and openspace, along with a transit center likelyto serve the Northstar Commuter Rail inthe future. The project, slated for com-pletion in six to eight years, will have a30-acre core with City Hall, police sta-tion, restaurants, a movie theater, aWinter Garden and possibly a perform-ing arts hub. In addition to the PACTcharter school, which began classes lastfall, the new urban neighborhood willalso provide residents with medical serv-ice, community and fitness centers andan ice arena. Projected to pour $3.5 mil-lion in annual taxes into Ramsey’s gen-eral fund and reach a total value of $1.1billion, the development is made possi-ble by the city’s contribution of $32 mil-lion for infrastructure, public facilitiesand regional improvements, with AnokaCounty promising $4.2 million for roads.

A consulting team has been hiredto advise Kansas City planners onwhat would be the first major over-haul of Kansas City zoning andsubdivision ordinances since1954. The planners are in the“reconnaissance phase” of theirwork, but by July 2005 they hopeto have a conceptual blueprint thatpeople can respond to at work-shops and presentations. Thetimetable then calls for actual coderecommendations to be ready byMarch 2006, followed by publichearings and final City Councilconsideration in two years. Theconsultants intend to give devel-opers in Kansas City clearer guid-ance to what is permissible andreduce the uncertainty involvedwhen planners have discretion tomake decisions on a case-by-casebasis. They also want to expandthe menu of what is allowablewhen it comes to housing.

The Las Vegas RegionalTransportation CommissionAdvisory Committee hasbegun meeting to form the ini-tial plans for the Las VegasLight Rail System. The initial33-mile segment of the so-called CAT Rail would linkHenderson with downtownLas Vegas, running laterthrough the city’s north to theMotor Speedway and bothNellis Air Force Base areas,with other spurs possible inthe future. This segment oflight-rail system, which couldbe built between 2009 and2012, could cost about $900million dollars, but a $300 mil-lion bus-based, rapid-transitsystem is also being consid-ered. The 22-member advisorycommittee will consider vari-ous options, routes and goalsfor Las Vegas area transit; offi-cials expect to finalize a con-cept in late 2005.

MINNESOTA NEVADAMISSOURI

smartGrowth inthestates (continued)


After approving preservation forNorth Jersey’s Highlandsregion in June of 2004, lawmak-ers in Trenton swiftly passed itscounterpart — legislationspeeding up development inmost other areas of the state.The so-called “fast-track law”requires the state to rule onbuilding permit applicationswithin 45 days or approval isautomatically granted. The newlaw has been described by someenvironmental groups as themost damaging legislation thestate has passed in 30 years.Supporters of the law, who areconsidering amendments toredress concerns of opponentsof the legislation, cite a legalopinion from the nonpartisanOffice of Legislative Servicesthat says the fast-track lawwon’t impede local zoning deci-sions.

Union County commissionersrecently abolished the county’sdensity bonus policy, leaving sixproposed subdivisions in limbo.Under the density bonus policy,developers who added features likestormwater management, curbs andsidewalks, open space and street-lights in their subdivisions couldbuild up to 15 percent more unitson a tract than they otherwisecould. The affected developmentscontain 1,879 lots, including 201bonus lots, on more than 1,500acres. Opponents to the policy,adopted in 2001, stated that thedensity bonus rewarded developerswhile straining the county’s infra-structure. The county planningboard also discussed incorporatingsome of the features required underSmart Growth into the county’s“clustering” provision, whichencourages developers to set asidecommon open space in their subdi-visions, allowing them to build thesame number of homes on smallerlots on the rest of the land.

The De Pere School District is will-ing to spend almost $860,000 on a22-acre site to build a neighborhoodelementary school in Ledgeview,Wisconsin, about two miles south-west of central De Pere. The pro-posed location is amid severalplanned subdivisions and a towncenter under construction which fitscomprehensive Smart Growth plansof both municipalities and willallow school access without cars.County planners have proposedredesigning the traffic patternsaround the school to better controltraffic, to promote pedestrian uses,and to build the school in a locationwhere kids can easily reach it onfoot and by bike. The purchase ofthe new land will be accomplishedby using the Wisconsin State TrustFund Loan Program and by repay-ing the debt through sale of proper-ty that was originally intended forthe school, but was deemed prob-lematic due to an undergroundpetroleum pipeline and area trafficcongestion.

NEW JERSEY NORTHCAROLINA

WISCONSIN

on common ground: summer 2005

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