We hear time and time again that urban retail centers need free and plentiful parking, and without it the customers will not come. New research, however, shows that the actual evidence for such claims is scant at best, and that retailers “vastly overestimate” the role free parking plays in their success. More from The Atlantic:
The review was conducted earlier this year by the cross-party policy group London Councils. The group performed a thorough meta-analysis of the existing academic and public agency research on the role of parking in urban commerce. It also sent parking questionnaires to all 33 London boroughs (comprising the city center, as well as inner and outer areas) and conducted market research with shoppers at three commercial centers in the outer regions. The findings can be reduced down to four main reasons retailers don’t need free parking to thrive.
1) Free, plentiful parking often hurts more than it helps, 2) shopkeepers overestimate how many customers arrive by car, 3) they also overestimate how much car customers spend, and 4) a mix of retailers is more important than parking supply.
In September, city officials stood in Price Hill alongside state officials to announce plans to demolish up to 700 vacant and blighted buildings in Cincinnati. The funding for the ongoing effort comes from a state-wide program called Move Ohio Forward, which gives demolition funding to cities from money the state won in a settlement with large banks last year over the home foreclosure process and lack of property upkeep by the banks.
City officials estimate that there are currently 1,300 vacant and blighted properties awaiting demolition. The $5.84 million grant, when matched with $5.34 million from the Hamilton County Land Reutilization Corporation and $3.49 million from the City, will provide enough funding to cover just over half of the total amount of demolitions mandated its own ordinances. The final amount of demolitions, officials say, will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood.
“The Moving Ohio Forward Grant Program provides unprecedented blight abatement opportunity for the City to clear dangerous, obsolete buildings from neighborhoods, make way for redevelopment, and eventually raise property values,” Edward Cunningham, Property Maintenance & Code Enforcement Division Manager, told UrbanCincy.
In an effort to further control what happens with the cleared sites, the City of Cincinnati will work with Hamilton County’s new Land Reutilization Program in order to acquire tax delinquent properties. Once the buildings are demolished, the City will determine if the land can be used as parks, community gardens or rehabilitated into new housing. So far, however, only enough funding for lot restoration on 200 parcels has been identified.
In cases where the lots are private properties, and are not able to be acquired, it will be up to the property owners of the vacant lots to decide the future of their property. According to Cunningham, property owners will be allowed to maintain the lots, create parks, parking or new infill construction.
More Comprehensive Plan for Demolitions Needed
Property demolition has been used by many cities including Cincinnati as a method of addressing problem vacant buildings that have been condemned because they are hazards to human health and unsafe to occupy. While the debate on the impacts of foreclosure and vacant property is far from over, some of these buildings are “too far gone” in the eyes of building inspectors that they legitimately need to come down. And according to Cunningham, the buildings being demolished under this program are buildings that are beyond repair.
Once the demolitions are completed, one-by-one, it will create more land between occupied houses thus negatively impacting the completeness of the neighborhood’s form. Without a strategic plan, vacant and unmaintained lots could end up degrading neighborhoods in the same manner as blighted homes; however, vacant lots tend to be easier to maintain and do not pose as much of a risk as a standing structure.
Furthermore, demolitions made through this program on private land will place the cost burden on the property. Should the property owner not pay the assessment for the work, then the property could be foreclosed by Hamilton County, which would then open the land up to redevelopment. This process, however, does take a considerable amount of time and offers no guarantee of redevelopment.
Projected Housing Units in Five Year Demolition Pool by City for Ohio’s “Big Eight” Cities. Source U.S. Census Bureau.
The challenge of increasing amounts of abandoned and blighted housing is not symptomatic of Cincinnati alone, as many older industrial cities are facing the similar problems. A recent report from the Brookings Institute found that Cincinnati might have close to 8,000 buildings eligible for demolition in the next five years. The report also stated that while the demolitions have the potential to stabilize neighborhoods, excessive regulations and costs prevent cities from demolishing the amount of housing that should be demolished on an annual basis.
To overcome these hurdles the report makes a series of recommendations for cities to devise their own strategic demolitions plan.
“Planners, urban designers, and residents must together evaluate how demolishing a particular building will affect the texture of its block or area,” the Brookings Institute stated in Laying the Groundwork for Change: Demolition, urban strategy, and policy reform (2012).
Cities such as Cincinnati need to have a level of transparency in place that allows for neighborhood input on the reuse of the newly created vacant lots. It is not merely enough to encourage neighborhoods to help identify future uses for vacant lots as the city is doing now, it should be required.
As previously profiled on UrbanCincy, Cincinnati’s population decline is systemic and although vacant building demolition is more a testament to the large supply of housing versus demand, absent a strategic demolitions plan, the city should be mindful that stabilizing neighborhoods relies heavily on preserving existing housing or building new housing capacity and offering incentives or neighborhood upgrades that would attract new residents.
The City of Cincinnati will announce proposed amendments to its tax abatement program for buildings built in adherence to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. Sponsors of the changes say that the amendments will further incentivize developers to reach for even higher LEED certifications.
“I think this change by the City will convince people to invest a little more upfront to get to a higher LEED level,” Marc Hueber, president of John Hueber Homes, which has built 22 LEED-certified homes in Cincinnati, stated in a prepared release.
Mayor Mark Mallory (D) makes a statement at the ribbon cutting for Over-the-Rhine’s first LEED certified residential project in 2009. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.
First approved in 2009, Cincinnati’s incentives offer a 15-year, 100% tax abatement valued up to $562,792 on new residential construction; and a ten-year tax abatement on improvements up to a maximum of $562,792 market value, and are considered to be among the most generous in the United States.
Once of the constant criticisms, however, of LEED incentives is that builders go after low-hanging fruit and end up more often than not developing properties at lower LEED levels. Cincinnati’s present incentives do work to combat that by removing the value limit for new and rehabilitated residential structures that achieve LEED Platinum certification.
Community leaders will gather with members of the development community tomorrow in Northside at 10:30am to announce the proposed changes, and city officials will be on-hand to answer any questions about the amendments to residential and commercial abatements.
Following the announcement, council member Quinlivan says that she intends to bring up the amendments in City Council’s Strategic Growth Committee at noon, and act to implement the changes at that time.
“The City of Cincinnati’s LEED tax abatement is an innovative model—and currently unparalleled in scope—to support energy and resource efficiency in homes and buildings,” says Doug Widener, director of community advancement for the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). “The program serves as a model for other cities and the proposed changes ensure that it remains at the forefront of such municipal efforts nationally while continuing to drive conservation and innovation locally.”
State and local governments are paying huge prices to companies as they desperately struggle to attract and retain jobs in their communities. New analysis, however, suggests that those incentives may not be paying dividends, and shows that the payouts may actually be more damaging than helpful long-term. In a region like Cincinnati, where its downtown traverses two states, three counties and four to five cities, the problem of wayward incentives is even more apparent. More from the New York Times:
A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them. Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States. Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors.
Nationwide, billions of dollars in incentives are being awarded as state governments face steep deficits. Last year alone, states cut public services and raised taxes by a collective $156 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning advocacy group. Incentives come in many forms: cash grants and loans; sales tax breaks; income tax credits and exemptions; free services; and property tax abatements. The income tax breaks add up to $18 billion and sales tax relief around $52 billion of the overall $80 billion in incentives.
Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) officially announced her 2013 mayoral campaign in Walnut Hills today before more than 100 people. The announcement comes a week after Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld (D) announced that he would not run for mayor next year. At this point, the election will pit Qualls against former Cincinnati City Councilman John Cranley (I), and a potential, but yet-to-be-determined Republican opponent.
Qualls’ announcement in Walnut Hills was both fitting as it one of the city’s neighborhoods for which she has been a major champion with regards to Complete Streets, form-based codes, and neighborhood investment. The location is also revealing in the fact that it hints at what kinds of policies would be promoted in her administration.
Roxanne Qualls mayoral campaign announcement by Twitter user @asesler.
“If the capital budget of the city doesn’t align with the comprehensive plan, then it doesn’t get implemented,” explained Vice Mayor Qualls on The UrbanCincy Podcast. “One of the key recommendations of the comprehensive plan is that it be implemented that the budget actually align with the recommendations of the comprehensive plan. That’s the job of elected officials, it’s my job, and those who are adopting this comp. plan that we start changing and investing in the areas that are recommended.”
While Qualls seems to be taking a more city-wide approach to her campaign, it appear that Cranley may take a more west side-focused approach due to his real estate investments in East Price Hill, which eventually forced him off of City Council in 2009 due to conflicts of interest.
Of course, Qualls had served as Cincinnati’s mayor once before (December 1993 – November 1999), but that term is not subjected to the current term limits that will force Mayor Mark Mallory (D) out of office next year. This perceived loophole exists due to a change in Cincinnati’s governance in 1999, which replaced the then indirectly elected mayor system with a “strong mayor” system. As a result, and should Qualls win, she would be eligible to serve two, four-year terms.
“A Qualls administration will be a great thing for Walnut Hills and all other neighborhoods,” Kathy Atkinson, board member and past president of the Walnut Hills Area Council, told UrbanCincy. “In the past several years, the strategic use of resources to advance key neighborhoods has served as a good revitalization approach. Building on that foundation, a Qualls administration will provide opportunities for each neighborhood to role up their sleeves and work alongside elected officials and city staff.”
Not everyone, however, is so thrilled with Qualls’ decision to run.
“Ms. Qualls is not the answer to lead Cincinnati,” exclaimed Hamilton County Republican Party Chairman, Alex Triantafilou, on his Facebook page. “Dodging tough budget decisions, building a streetcar, and pension mess all on her watch.”
With almost an entire year of campaigning ahead of us, one thing we know for sure is that this is only the beginning of what will most likely become a grueling campaign between two well-known political heavyweights.
Listen to our entire podcast with Vice Mayor Qualls where we discuss her form-based code initiative, and the policy items she intends to focus on if elected mayor. The UrbanCincy Podcast can be downloaded from iTunes for free, or can be streamed directly from your web browser.
