AntiRust

Is Pittsburgh Out of the Loop? More on Shrinking Cities

You might have missed this article in USA TODAY, seeing that it ran over the holiday. But give it a look. It builds on that New York Times story about shrinking cities, and how struggling places like Youngstown are coming to terms with new realities. Here's USA TODAY on Richmond, VA:

Slowly, old American cities that have been in a downward population spiral for a half-century or more are reinventing themselves as, well, smaller cities. They're starting to adopt — many, like Richmond, do it unknowingly — tenets of the burgeoning, European-born "Shrinking Cities" movement. The idea: If cities can grow in a smart way, they can also shrink smartly. ...

"European cities are grappling with how you deal with shrinking cities more forthrightly than we are," says John Accordino, urban and regional planning professor at Virginia Commonwealth University here. "(U.S. cities) are still trying to figure out how do we get our piece of the metro growth."

Youngstown, Ohio, is an exception. It has fully embraced its shrinkage. The population, now about 83,000, is less than half what it was when the steel industry collapsed in the 1970s.

"You look at the facts and come up with solutions," chief planner Anthony Kobak says. "The first step the city has come to terms with is being a small city."

So what's Pittsburgh's plan? Build new neighborhoods. Here are some highlights from the Post-Gazette:

It's official. Mayor Bob O'Connor proclaimed Downtown as the newest neighborhood, the 89th in the city, at a reception Tuesday that also honored Henry and Elsie Hillman.  … An initiative to develop more housing and the amenities that support residential growth is under way, with $500 million in investments at work.

Now, you have to read carefully, because this is complex stuff. It turns out that new residential is not unheard of in shrinking cities. Some of the ones highlighted in the USA TODAY article are refurbing some old neighborhoods, abandoning others.

But I reiterate: They are ABANDONING OTHERS. That is, if your total population is falling and a few neighborhoods are growing, then, by definition, some other neighborhoods are going to get smaller. Only no one in Pittsburgh is willing to talk about which neighborhoods are going to go away if the Golden Triangle becomes a boomtown.

Well now it seems that at least some people have become really ambitious. And the goal has become to resist the whole "shrinking city" fate by, well, not shrinking anymore.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl would love to be the guy who reverses the city's six-decade population plunge. His formula for doing that includes affordable living and merrymaking Downtown, more fun development like the SouthSide Works, and engagement between the city and its school district.

Those were the broad visions the mayor laid out yesterday to Post-Gazette editors and a reporter. His 100th day in office passed Sunday, and he asserted that he has gone beyond being a steward for the late Bob O'Connor, and offers a distinct vision for the city's future.

Again, check out USA TODAY for a look at how other cities are handling these questions. In the meantime, another read through that Ravenstahl interview reveals some interesting ideas about urban housing:

"It's definitely a challenge, and one I'm well aware of, and one my administration is looking at in terms of making that more affordable," he said. "Philadelphia has been very successful with a 10-year tax abatement for Downtown, something we're looking at internally."

Philadelphia's 10-year tax abatement on residential construction citywide, launched in 1997, spurred $375 million worth of new housing that wouldn't have otherwise happened, said Joe Grace, spokesman for Mayor John Street. It has been used mostly by Center City developers, pushing the downtown population to 88,000 now, and a projected 100,000 in a year, he said.

"By any standard, the tax abatement in Philadelphia has been a success," Mr. Grace said.

Well, that last quote might be a bit of an overstatement. At least the "by any standard" part. Because there is one obvious standard by which the program could be considered a failure: If you are using it to add to the city's population, it hasn't worked.

Because Philadelphia's has been falling.

Maybe Pittsburgh can resist that fate. Perhaps the worm has turned and the Golden Triangle's resurgence will lead to a population boom. Great. OK. So what counts as a boom? What's the goal?

Seriously. WHAT'S THE GOAL? We are spending million of dollars of public money to make these things happen. What are we trying to achieve? How are we going to measure success?

Neighborhoods: Empty-Nesters Moving to the City

Check out this article in the New York Times. It details how a new wave of baby-boomers is considering a move back into the city.

What you might find interesting is the idea that these people are not really all that interested in moving into fancy downtown condos:

But not all of the baby boomers being drawn to New York City are wealthy retirees seeking aeries on Central Park. The city is also luring middle-class suburbanites on the lookout for houses and condos in Brooklyn and Queens. Not yet of retirement age, but with children grown up, they see the city as the place where they want to grow old, and they are making the move as part of a future retirement plan.

They are wooed not only by the city’s cultural attractions, but also by lower property taxes, better public transportation, a highly accessible health care system and the chance to be closer to city-dwelling children.

Louis and Susan Greer are empty nesters who have decided to pack up their five-bedroom house on a six-acre spread in Campbell Hall, N.Y., in Orange County, and move to Brooklyn. They are seeking either a one-family house for under $600,000, or a two-family for under $800,000.

Great news for Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, one might suppose. Only this might pose a problem:

Mr. Greer’s 2-hour-and-15-minute “commute from Hades” to his job in Lower Manhattan was one factor, but he said it was rising property taxes that finally persuaded him and his wife to start their Brooklyn house hunt. “That was the nail in the coffin,” he said, “because we don’t have children at home anymore, and most of the taxes go to schools.”

Here is the basic formula:

Mrs. Greer said they had already resigned themselves to having a smaller kitchen and even forgoing a garage, as long as they found a house with a decent-sized backyard.

But eventually, perhaps it comes back to the tax issues. This article actually mentions it again:

Vincent Koo, owner of Exit Kingdom Realty in Forest Hills, said that his office had worked with many Long Islanders looking to downsize and move to Queens. “We see a lot of people who want to cut down on the commute,” he said, “and property taxes are a big issue for them.”

If this trend continues, I suspect it will lead to a ton of commentary regarding the Boomers and how X they are. Supporters will talk about cultural awareness and urbanity and sophistication. Critics will talk about greed and self-centeredness. I think the tax issue will be huge. That is, boomers abandoned cities when they wanted fancy schools for junior. And now that junior is sufficiently educated, they are abandoning those exurban communities so they can go to the theater. Craven? Crafty? Take your pick.

Of course, this migration will have to go on for a while to qualify as a real trend. In the meantime, I think it is important to note that for a lot of these people, as "urbane" as they are, a gleaming condo in the CBD is not on the shopping list.

Pssst... That Free Arena? It Wasn't Really Free.

A while ago I questioned whether the Isle of Capri's arena proposal really amounted to a free arena. It did not, all cheerleading from the Post-Gazette aside.

I am really glad to see that a lot of people can see through such claims. One of the best take-downs of that logic comes from The Burgh Report. Pittsblog is also on the ball. As is Jonathan Potts.

For one of "America's Great Newspapers," the PG is often remarkably unskeptical of the powers that be. Or the powers that would have been, I suppose, in this case.

At any rate, I predict that exactly seven people in the Pittsburgh region will remain skeptical of the "free arena" claim, and that elected officials will continue falling all over themselves to shovel cash at the Penguins.

That is not a very bold prediction, sadly, as said officials are already in the process of sucking up to Mario.

To hell with it. Let them stay if they can make an arena happen. Or not. Mr. Barden has already committed a pile to the cause. Let Mario and the fans pitch in the rest.

In the meantime: The free arena was never a free arena in the first place. Free to Mario, maybe. But not free to taxpayers.

Redevelopment Saga Continues

This bizarre, big-money controversy in Baltimore keeps getting weirder and weirder.

Background: A hugely wealthy charity in Baltimore called the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation owns an enormous swath of land in the city's decrepit west end. It has dreamed up a plan to spend a kajllion dollars to redevelop that property. Nice folks. And it's not as if they envision a playground and some trash cans. They have signed on with the Cordish Company to do the work. You know the Cordish Company. It has done a ton of work in Baltimore. And the Pittsburgh Steelers are currently working with Cordish to being a concert venue to the North Side. Baltimore officials do not like the redevelopment plan, though. They want to control who does the redevelopment. So officials are planning to use eminent domain, condemn the Weinberg property and hire a developer based in New York. It is even worse than it sounds. Check here and here for sordid details and links.

News: So those Baltimore officials have moved forward with their plan to take the property and sell it to the New York developers they prefer. So at least the city will be getting some money into its coffers. Except no one knows if that's true. Seems that the contract the city drew up with the developer has some holes in it:

The Board of Estimates, the city's spending board, had been scheduled to vote Wednesday on a contract to sell 37 properties in 3.6 acres to the developer for $21.6 million. More than half of the properties are owned by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, one of the city's largest charities. The Chera Group plans to build 400 market-rate apartments, 1,000 parking spaces and as much as 200,000 square feet of shops.

But the board postponed the vote until its Jan. 10 meeting after Comptroller Joan M. Pratt raised concerns that the agreement put no cap on the cost of demolition, environmental cleanup and streetscape improvements that the developer could deduct. The agreement estimates those costs at $8 million.

Pratt also said she wanted more clarification on the failed negotiations between the city and the Weinberg Foundation over the Weinberg properties. The city has said it would proceed with a "quick take" condemnation of the Weinberg properties.

In effect, it appears that the city might actually be giving the property away rather than selling it. Or that would appear to be the case if the cost of demolition equals or exceed the sales amount. And no one thought to cap the demolition costs. In a really intriguing twist, what happens if demolition costs MORE than the purchase price? Does that mean that the city will have to pay the developer to take the property? Oh boy. Still, the best part of this whole thing is that the screwed-up sales agreement is causing a delay. Well, guess how the city justified taking the property away from a wealthy charity in order to develop it. Seriously. Guess.

Yes. Because the charity had taken too long to come up with a development plan.

Are you a lawyer? I suggest you go to Baltimore. There is going to be a lot of work there for you.

The Agony of an Honest Anti-Tobacco Activist

Dr. Michael Siegel has spent his entire career warning about the dangers of tobacco, and a great deal of effort supporting anti-tobacco measures such as smoking bans in bars and restaurants. I disagree with him about a lot of things, but even he has finally come to terms with an uncomfortable reality: his "side" of the debate has given up any and all claims to the scientific high-ground in favor of overblown fear-mongering. Check out this devastating analysis:

By virtue of the widespread, coordinated, and intentional deceptive, misleading, and inaccurate statements being made by anti-smoking groups about the health effects of secondhand smoke, I believe that the tobacco control movement has unfortunately given up the scientific high ground that it previously could argue that it held above its opponents.

And this, I feel, is a great loss.

We used to be able to say, at the very least, that we had the science on our side. We used to be able to say that we had honesty, accuracy, and the truth on our side. We used to be able to say that while our opponents were cherry-picking data, misrepresenting or exaggerating the science, and misleading or deceiving the public by spinning scientific information in a favorable way, we were the carriers of the wholesome, unadulterated truth. ...

This has uncomfortably put me in an awkward position. I have to argue that on the one hand, secondhand smoke is hazardous and that a lot of what the anti-smoking groups are telling the public is true. But I also have to argue, on the other hand, that secondhand smoke is not as hazardous as we are saying it is, and that a lot of what the anti-smoking groups are telling the public is not true.

But this is where things get really interesting for me:

To anti-smoking advocates, there is no middle ground. By virtue of who we are, and by virtue of who the tobacco companies are, everything we say must be correct and everything they or their allies say must be wrong. To align oneself with a position that runs counter to the anti-smoking one, no matter how extreme, is tantamount to working for the tobacco industry. It automatically makes you a tobacco stooge, or at least a tobacco sympathizer. You have officially and irredeemably crossed over to the "dark side."

Sound familiar? It ought to if you read the Post-Gazette:

June 29, 2006: Lawmakers in Pennsylvania have too long listened to the bellyaching of restaurant and bar owners who contended they'd lose business if legislation prohibited them from exposing waitresses and child customers to toxic secondhand smoke. The legislators need to stop kissing the feet of these businessmen and tobacco lobbyists and focus on two points made by the surgeon general.

October 1, 2006: More important, it is immoral to contend that profits trump workers' health. The only thing dirtier than the cigarette smoke in this situation is the politics.

August 21, 2006: Did Dr. Carmona's bold stand get him fired? We wouldn't be surprised. After all, the business interests hard at work against real smoking bans are the same businesses routinely found on President Bush's list of influential campaign contributors.

June 8, 2006: Ten state representatives turned their backs on their Democratic roots this week, supporting the cigarette industry and businesses such as bars instead of defending the health of Pennsylvanians. ... It means 10 Democrats chose big business over the health of the state's residents. They chose the cigarette industry and restaurant lobby over Rep. Katie True, a Lancaster Republican, supporter of the bill and cancer survivor. It's one year for her this month.

This goes on and on and on and on. Anyone who opposes the ban is a lackey. A stooge. A pawn of Big Tobacco. A dishonest hack. On the take.

At least Dr. Siegel can see through that deception. Too bad one of America's "Great Newspapers" can't be as honest as a public health expert who actually agrees with them.

Erie: Urban Renewal and Urban Intrigue

Check out this fascinating story in the Erie Times-News. (Registration required.) I am not at all sure there are any lessons here for other cities, but the details seem custom-made for a TV miniseries--at least if they had unfolded in New York City instead of Erie:

John Elliott considers Lovell Place a model for urban renewal.

"Lovell Place is an important anchor in that part of downtown,"said Elliott, executive director of the Erie Redevelopment Authority. "It is a tremendous investment, a tremendous positive change that Steve McGarvey effected there."

Elliott is one of many local people who are closely following how Lovell Place emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, including who the new owner might be.

Whatever happens, they said, Lovell Place will remain a testament to the commitment of Steve McGarvey, who died in February 2005, to the section of Erie that McGarvey liked to call "midtown."

McGarvey purchased the former Lovell Manufacturing Co. complex in 1991, when he was 23 years old. By the end of the decade, Lovell Place, at East 13th and French streets, was full of apartments, a restaurant, a bookstore and government offices.

The problem with this assessment is that Lovell Place is mired in bankruptcy. And that McGarvey, tragically, died last year. He was just 36 years old. Now the future of his signature project is in doubt. It seems like it will survive, but in what form remains unclear.

Lovell Place has been mired in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Erie for more than a year. Its assets are listed as $10.6 million and its liabilities $19.9 million -- including $16.7 million in mortgage debt to the primary lender, Pittsburgh-based National City Bank.

McGarvey's personal estate, with assets of $325,000, is insolvent, crushed by more than $19.2 million in unpaid claims against it, according to court records. And McGarvey's companies that controlled his properties in downtown Buffalo, where his development project there was called Century Centre, filed for bankruptcy at the federal courthouse in Erie in late October.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Warren W. Bentz will oversee the eventual sales of those Buffalo properties -- the former Trico windshield-wiper plant and the nearby M. Wile clothing plant, which McGarvey transformed into offices.

Bentz will also oversee the public sale of Lovell Place, McGarvey's signature venture in Erie, a project that succeeded in revitalizing an entire inner-city block even as it sank deeper into debt.

Like I said, I don't really see any huge lessons to be learned here. But this is a striking story. This guy got started as a redeveloper at the age of 23? The article does not offer nearly as much background as it might, but I suspect McGarvey was a known quantity in Erie. I'll dig around a bit.

Smoking Bans and Nauseating Elitism

Of all the dismaying realities lurking beneath the effort to ban smoking in bars and restaurants--the exaggerated science, the exaggerated concern for worker safety, the  slippery slope of nanny state bureaucracy--the worst is probably the cultural elitism. Just take a look at the deep, deep concern the Cleveland Plain-Dealer is displaying for smokers...

... as long as the smokers are uppity creative-classers engaging in a bit of conspicuous, self-conscious cultural experimentation.

Yep. That's right. There are efforts afoot to make it possible for Ohio's hookah bars to gain exemptions from the state's rigid new smoking ban. You know. The smoking ban that makes it illegal for a truck driver to smoke a cigarette in a rig that he owns and operates. From the article:

Hookah bars, Middle Eastern-styled smoking clubs en vogue with college students and young professionals, are desperate to survive the state's anti-smoking law.

Many are selling even more tobacco products to qualify for a loophole in a law.

Others are considering radical changes to their businesses or pleading for an exemption based on the hook's culture heritage and its central fixture in their business.

Cultural heritage? Why does it count as cultural heritage for "college students and young professionals" to suck tobacco smoke out of devices invented in the Middle East, but it does not count as cultural heritage for a group of loggers in Elk County to meet at a bar and suck tobacco smoke out of paper tubes made popular in Hollywood movies?

But here is the very best part, a quote so fascinating and telling that it speaks volumes about some of the people who support these kinds of bans:

Many hookah smokers don't connect the practice to smoking. Vip Garg, an ex-cigarette smoker and a doctor at MetroHealth Medical Center, said it didn't occur to him when he voted for November's anti-smoking measure that it would cover the water pipe.

Thanks, Dr. Gard. I couldn't have said it better myself, or invented a better character to represent the truly loathsome nature of many of the people who support such bans. To be sure, not all ban supporters rise to this level of obvious, self-serving absurdity. But this guy is not alone.

So how have officials responded?

Cleveland's Health Department has told Kan Zaman it can keep letting customers smoke its hookahs until the state provides more guidance. While the law went into effect last week, enforcement won't begin until June.

To accommodate its place in legal limbo, the nightclub made no-smoking signs that say, "No smoking cigarettes."

Sorry, loggers, waitresses and any other white-trash hillbillies intent on poisoning bartenders with their acrid cigarette smoke. Only hookah smoking allowed here.

Happily, upper-middle-class creative types are not the only people who can figure out how to game the system. I am rooting for these guys:

In Columbus, the Shisha Lounge near Ohio State University is replacing fruit juices and sandwiches with cigarette vending machines to bump up its tobacco revenue to 80 percent, employee Greg Bates said. It already makes about two-thirds of its revenue from tobacco, which was enough to satisfy the exemptions in Columbus' city smoking ban.

Replacing fruit juice with cigarettes. Sweet.

Update: It is unclear to me whether the law will impact owner/operators of trucks. This article in the Plain Dealer indicates that it won't. But this editorial indicates that it will. (The editorial was written after the article, but I think it's still up in the air.) But even if the ban applies only to company-owned trucks, it is still ridiculous. The whole ban is based on the idea that second-hand smoke is dangerous. If my company owns a truck and I allow Driver A to smoke in it on Monday, I can't see how Driver B is endangered in any way on Tuesday. Sure, the truck might stink. But the law is not supposed to be about aesthetic concerns like how things smell. It is supposed to be based on hard science and public health.

Right?

If only those hillbilly truck drivers would switch to hookahs.

Washington Date Lab: Meat Products, Pittsburgh Natives and Heartbreak

So the Washington Post has a regular section in which they set people up on a date. Silly, yes. But this one features two Pittsburgh natives, both of whom love meat products and the Steelers. A match made in heaven, as far as I can tell.

Or perhaps not. I give this guy zero stars for not calling.

I would suggest a few of my friends for this young lady. Except all of my friends are degenerates.

Update: Link fixed...

Big Box Retail Comes to the City: But Is It "Urban"?

Here's a fascinating story about big box retailers like Target and Home Depot moving back into Baltimore. It appears to be a trend:

After years of building in the suburbs with open land and large numbers of shoppers, big-box retailers and others are seeking new business in shopping-deprived cities such as Baltimore by pumping new life into urban neighborhoods and rethinking their cookie-cutter image.

... Retailers have been trickling back into cities for the past decade, but the momentum has picked up in recent years as young professionals and empty-nesters have traded the suburbs for urban living.

America's bedroom communities can sustain only so many Wal-Marts and Targets, retailers have discovered. As the suburbs become crowded with stores, retailers are rediscovering vacant or tired urban shopping centers with hopes of tapping new revenue.

This has to be good news for people interested in reviving cities. But there are some things to consider. First, many of the most vocal critics of suburban living go beyond criticizing where the big boxes are located--they object to their very existence as "cookie cutter" conformity and "soul-less" consumerism. Well, if target is a scourge in that regard, its presence ought to be something city residents resist, right? And Home Depot ain't exactly McNulty's Corner Hardware.

It is also important to point out that these places are not exactly locating on the corner of Main and Mayberry. Take a look at what prompted the Baltimore story:

Cities were once the home of retail hubs, but in the 1960s the shopping began following residential flight to the suburbs. Department stores chose shopping malls over Main Streets. Big-box retailers preferred strip shopping malls.

As retailers started to rediscover cities, the national chains typically sought out tourist areas, such as Baltimore's Inner Harbor, or core downtowns. Now, retailers are moving into neighborhoods beyond downtown, such as the Mondawmin Mall project.

...The $70 million Mondawmin Mall renovation is the latest example of the renewed interest for retail in Baltimore. Mondawmin is attractive to retailers because it's one of the few areas with a parking lot and easy access to many parts of the city, retail consultants say.

Mondawmin mall is... A shopping mall. It is within the city limits. But it's a mall. Now, I am sure that a mall within the city might be better for a lot of reasons. Less commuting and driving and all of that. But is does not come across as particularly "urban," either.

So is this good news for urban advocates? "Retail moves back to the city."

Or is it bad news for urban advocates? "Cities looking more like suburbs."

Update: Imprtant to note that Mondawmin Mall is not a new mall being built for these big boxes. As the article points out, it is currently a failing urban shopping center. So the parking lots are already there. The question is, is it a good idea to revive these places or not? Do big boxes have a place in the city?

For the record, I think a mall with a Target is a lot better than a boarded up eyesore.

Stadium Financing, Texas Style

Everyone has gone completely bonkers. And by that I mean insane. Nutso. Cuckoo. And all in an effort to massage Jerry Jones's ego.

Check out this story. The voters of Arlington, Texas, agreed to pay $325 million to finance a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. And get this: That is not even going to cover one-third of the total cost.

Yep. Jerry Jones is building a $1 billion stadium.

Look. This is not bilking taxpayers in order to keep the team around. Or to stay competitive. This is an exercise in complete and utter excess. And don't take it from me. Check out the story. Take a look at how they are pitching this thing:

Bob Costas was the master of ceremonies and his hyperbole-filled introduction included calling the stadium "the most extraordinary athletic facility ever conceived ... a 21st century, supersonic setting." A video leading to computer-generated shots of the interior referenced the Pyramids in Egypt and the Colosseum among other architectural wonders. :

I suppose that the knock against things like the pyramids is that the designers used slave labor to build themselves a bit of immortality. Seems to me that Arlington residents who voted against the project but are stuck with the bill anyways might be feeling sympathetic at the moment.

Look. A $700 million stadium would still be a pretty nice stadium. But that's not enough for Mr. Jones. Or the NFL.

But I can take at least some solace. Despite all that money, all that excess, someone still forgot to buy some class: The stadium will come complete with artificial grass.