AntiRust

Pennsylvania Has One National Forest: But What's It For?

Who should the Allegheny National Forest serve? I tried to figure that out once. But let's just say the jury is still out.

Just try thinking about it from Pittsburgh's perspective. Would you rather live near a pristine wilderness where you can do backwoods camping? Or would you rather live near a posh rural retreat with a lot of amenities? Is it the government's job to provide either? What about the people who live there? Do they have a say? What if they want something you don't want? Do their views take precedent? Why? Why not? What if they "built" the forest with their own hands? What if they saved it from extinction? Is there a balance? Who gets to strike it? What if that balance gets struck and people litigate until that balance is no longer possible? Messy stuff.

Someone ought to write a book.

Wait...

The State of Industry In Pennsylvania: The Erie Case

How ya like them apples?

Not very much. At least not in Erie, where a juice company has decided not to build a plant despite a few hundred thousand dollars in subsidized loans.

Yeah, registration is required. But it's worth it. Especially since there is also a story about how a company that makes livestock feed is expanding in the area. After... you guessed it... a few hundred thousand dollars in subsidized loans.

I think we have a problem here.

Sure, maybe everyone has a problem. And maybe that's the way we have to play the game now. And maybe that's the way we always played it.

But I still think it's a problem.

Eminent Domain: What About the "Easy" Cases?

It is easy for people like me to point out obvious abuses of eminent domain. But what about the cases that seem to make more sense? Like this one, in Baltimore? I mean, this is obviously a blighted area. The details are gruesome. Check them out.

Yeah. Sometimes it's easy to be a libertarian. And sometimes not so easy.

Lucky for me the people in charge of such things do all they can to smooth out such difficulties. Here's what I mean. From the story:

The city's housing department has applied for a $500,000 state grant to augment about $800,000 of its own money to acquire and tear down properties on the North Durham Street block. Demolition is tentatively scheduled to begin in November 2007.

City officials say that razing the block would create a cleared site that would be far more attractive to developers than a block of mostly vacant houses. They also say it would enhance the desirability not only of the brewery property - which was awarded to a developer last fall - but also of two vacant school buildings nearby.

OK. Sounds about par for the course. Nothing strange. In fact, seems like some of the locals even support the transition:

The city's proposal is applauded by the head of a neighborhood group, who lives a block away and has pushed for years to have the block torn down.

"We're happy. It's well overdue," said Doris Minor-Terrell, president of the Rutland Lafayette Community Association, named for two streets in the area.

But all is not well:

The city has in the past torn down other deteriorated blocks in the area, only to see them remain vacant lots. Still, officials are convinced that continuing to tear down blocks such as this one is the best way to improve the appearance of the neighborhood by reducing blight and preparing sites for new housing if the market in the area improves.

But the pastor of the Temple of God church at the north end of the street and the church building's owner would prefer the block be renovated for low-income renters and homeowners.

"If" the market improves? Uh oh. And this looks a lot like robbing Paul to pay the mayor's pals:

The city's budget for the project calls for about $600,000 in city money to acquire the properties and relocate the church and residents. An additional $200,000 in city funds plus the $500,000 in state money are earmarked for the demolition.

The city expects that it will eventually recover $375,000 of its costs through the sale of the land.

Um, what the hell? If, as supporters of the plan argue, "razing the block would create a cleared site that would be far more attractive to developers," then why doesn't it appear all that attractive to developers? I mean, demolition and relocation is going to cost $1.3 milion. But the developers will only pay $375,000 for the land? I mean, it's a hell of a lot of land. In a pretty good housing market. Perfectly cleared and offered for development.

So OK. Demolish it. Then...

Parcel it out and offer the lots at an auction.

Why does that always appear to be the last option, if it's one at all? Well, because then the people in favor at city hall wouldn't get a million dollars worth of clearing and relocating for free, of course.

This makes the whole thing stink of cronyism. To me at least.

And makes it a lot easier to be a libertarian.

Thanks, Baltimore!

So my answer is DON'T demolish it. Let it go to hell. Or keep going. Sure, tear down the dangerous buildings, but remove the threat of eminent domain for the occupied places. Sell what the city takes--for a song. Forgive back taxes on the properties. Put accelerated policies in place to ease one-by-one refurbs of the houses.

In a housing market with this much potential, it will gentrify soon enough. And at least the locals who do own their places will benefit to the extent that they hold on and sell out later on, when the neighborhood is more desirable. Hell, maybe even a few of them will learn how to flip.

Better than what's happening now, as far as I can tell. And without all the Big Developer nonsense.

City Living: How Much Housing Is Too Much?

I've occasionally wondered how plans for a few thousand downtown condominiums might impact landlords in other parts of the city. And the response has largely been, "It won't impact them." The reasoning behind that response has varied, but for the most part I think it rests on the idea that the number of condos going in is relatively small compared to the larger population. And that the people moving into the Fifth-Forbes corridor won't be moving there from Shadyside, but from Cleveland, NYC, Philly and other places--meaning that the new housing will actually boost the local population rather than shift it around.

I have skeptical, to say the least. But after reading this I am even more so. The long and short of it: Baltimore has been a few years ahead of Pittsburgh in the condo boom, and that boom has... made an impact on the local housing market:

Home sales in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties have fallen each month since October from year-earlier levels, and the number of unsold properties has been piling up: The number for sale in June was more than twice the number a year earlier.

In addition, developers, in the belief that a city that once shunned condos is ready to embrace them, have been adding hundreds of units in the region as the overall market has weakened, and more are in the pipeline.

And nationwide investors, intent on cashing in on rising real estate values, had been snatching up units in hot markets, fanning demand and fueling fears of overbuilding.

In the Baltimore area, about 5,000 condos - 1,300 of them in the city - were for sale at the end of June, nearly double the 2,800 that were for sale six months earlier, according to Delta Associates, an Alexandria, Va.-based real estate information firm. Developers plan to market 5,024 new condos in the area over the next three years, 2,053 of them in the city, Delta reports.

Now, there are a lot of differences between Baltimore and Pittsburgh. But I think the most important one is that Baltimore has been a booming housing market. And it promises to continue along those lines as the region adds an estimated 200,000 jobs over the next 25 years.

Pittsburgh has not been a booming housing market. And as far as I can tell, even the rosiest predictions for downtown development aren't calling for anything even close to 200,000 jobs.

So the question is: If the Baltimore real estate market, with all those rosy predictions, is having trouble adjusting to thousands of new condos, why would Pittsburgh be different? In fact, why wouldn't it be worse?

I think this comes down to basic economics: If you add thousands of residential units in a metropolitan area that is losing population, you are going to see--you will have to see--an impact in the housing market.

And if those new units are subsidized, the people who own and operate existing housing stock have every reason to be concerned that someone is gaming the system against them. And in favor of people with better connections at city hall.

Coudersport, PA: Development, Culture and the Company Town

Not so long ago the Post-Gazette ran a series about Charlotte, NC, and that city's success as a regional banking center. Which led to a brief discussion about the dangers of being a company town.

Well, here's the latest on that front from Pennsylvania: Disgraced cable giant Adelphia has been taken over, and the big money appears to be leaving little Coudersport, PA.

I remember when I was in college and Adelphia was booming in Coudersport. Nobody could believe it. Once a typical logging town, it was suddenly awash in cash brought in by a local boy who done good. They were actually BUILDING stuff there. Adding jobs. People were moving there. From cities! Lawyers. Accountants. Etc.

The town got a really good scrubbing. And it did look great. Coffee shops. Wine stores. All sorts of stuff you don't normally associate with small towns on the Northern Tier. (As an aside, the local JC Penney's was even still open. And as far as I know still is. And it's downtown. Not out in a strip mall somewhere. Which seems to indicate to me that the town was not as economically moribund as it might have been prior to the Adelphia infusion.) At the same time, a lot of people were getting priced out of the housing market. Culture clashes. Etc.

So was this experience bad for Coudersport? Or good for Coudersport?

Lots of interesting development and cultural discussions to be had here. Someone ought to write a book.

UPDATE: I'm not sure what it adds to the discussion, but it might be worth noting that the accountants and lawyers were not the only people invading Coudersport during the boom years.

Afraid of Walmart?

Has the global retail empire come up against global realities?

Reason has the goods. I think there are a lot of implications here. And perhaps the most important one is, if people don't like Walmart, Walmart does not survive. Which sort of confronts the notion that the company's global takeover is inevitable.

I know, there are a lot of political and policy issues at play. And the company gets a lot of breaks that grease the skids of its success. Still, when people don't shop there, it closes. And they can, in fact, choose not to shop there.

I would also like to see more about how the "culture" of the Walmart environment comes up against resistance even here in America. There is a short mention in this piece about how people in the Northeast bristle at the whole "effusiveness" thing.

Interesting.

A Country Club Moment: Rich People Behaving Oddly

This is the kind of thing that strikes me as weird but somehow important: A new, extremely high-end country club for people aching to be hip.

The clubhouse — glassy and aggressively futuristic — looks more like a contemporary art museum in Berlin, which is not inappropriate, since it will feature, upon its completion this fall, art from Mr. Rubin’s collection. A satirical piece called “Arthur Negro I,” a life-size statue of a black revolutionary in an argyle sweater and plus fours, by Charles McGill, a black artist, will stand in the pro shop.

The 18-hole golf course gets an arty, postmodern treatment: ruins of the old racetrack, including guardrails and flag stations, pop up around the lush fairways. Discarded tires line the cart paths.

And forget about blue blazers. At the Bridge backward ball caps, jeans and even tattoos or face piercings (typically on guests in the music business) attract no steely stares.

In short, the Bridge — despite $600,000 membership fees, which make it one of the most expensive clubs in the country — is an anti-country club of sorts. It is not just the first high-end club in America that dares to be hip but, seemingly, the first one that cares to be hip. Hipness, after all, is not a sensibility typically associated with the sort of middle-aged Gulfstream-flying plutocrat who can write a half-million-dollar-plus check to join a private club. To many a traditional mogul, joining a country club is a statement that he has arrived on the inside. Who would want to spend all that money to look like an outsider?

To be clear, I don't think it's important because it matters in some cosmic sense. Rather, I think this is yet another sign that the nature of wealth and privilege is changing. In good ways and in bad. There used to be a code of conduct. It was an admittedly imperfect way to keep the upper class in line. Similar to the "rules" governing what British royalty could and could not do. It made things stuffy. But it also made them a bit predictable.

That appears to be going the way of the dodo.

Hmmm.

And a question: Does the fact that edgy and countercultural has gone upscale indicate that edgy and countercultural is on the way out?

Update: For some reason the link did not make it into the original post. Thanks to Sheel for pointing it out.

Urban Revitalization Comes to the Suburbs

This project has been underway for a long time. But it adds a whole new element to urban development. That is, it is unabashedly NOT urban. But it is so huge it has the NAACP thinking abut relocating to the suburbs.

But is it the suburbs? Or is this basically the construction of a whole new city? Most of the suburbs I know don't have things like a 1,500-room convention center hotel.

This is an interesting question in a lot of places around DC. Are Arlington and Alexandria suburbs or cities? They have downtowns. Old ones. That are walkable. And what about newer places? Is Reston a suburb or a city? It has taller office buildings than DC.

Interesting stuff. Especially with the racial politics involved. Prince George's County has one of the highest populations of middle-class African-Americans in the country. So the familiar discussion of "white flight" to the 'burbs has a different feel to it there. More on that angle:

"The next level [of the Civil Rights movement] is economic development ... and you couldn't have a better county in the world for that branding than Prince George's County, Md."

Steele, the state's first African-American statewide elected official and a candidate for U.S. Senate, said the economic dynamism of Prince George's County will make the National Harbor the new gateway to Maryland and the perfect place for the NAACP.

In another twist, the NAACP moved to Baltimore from NYC in 1986, after Charm City drew them in with a bunch of subsidies.

What comes around goes around, I suppose.

Update: Here's more on Reston from Wikipedia. The intro actually says the place is "not a city." But it sure sounds a lot like what urban advocates admire.

Reston Town Center is becoming a focal point for business and transportation connections within the community, with several high-rise office buildings, restaurants, a cinema, a hotel, and shops. Reston also straddles the booming Northern Virginia Technology Corridor and is home to the world headquarters of two Fortune 500 corporations, (Sprint Nextel and Sallie Mae), as well as the United States Geological Survey and the National Wildlife Federation.

...From the beginning Reston was designed to follow "guiding principles" in its development that would stress quality of life. Citizens would be able to live in the same community while going through different life cycles with different housing needs as they age. It was hoped that Restonians could live, work, and have recreation in their own community, with common grounds and scenic beauty shared equally regardless of income level.