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Local governments should focus on helping businesses
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Local governments have been looking at falling tax revenues, empty storefronts and residential property lying fallow in mid-development. As a result, cities have paid a lot of lip service to developers and small businesses to bring their efforts to bear and redevelop during the ongoing recession.
Their actions should back up their fine words.
Unfortunately, this has not always been the case. Instead, local city councils seem to treat those who come to put their good faith and credit on the line with stiff resistance.
Here are two examples:
• In Roswell on Ga. 92/Woodstock Road, owners of an empty building with a prospective tenant in hand want to reopen a day care center. Coming back to the City Council, the owners want to protect themselves and ask for an expansion of zoning rights so that other uses could be allowed. Realtors suggested a dental office.
The rest of the time before council is taken up with the elected officials' insistence that in return, the property owners give up five parking spaces at the front of the building. That most likely is a deal-killer. It would certainly rule out the day care. The state would not allow a license without adequate parking near the entrance for the safe pickup and drop-off of small children.
Yes, the property does lie within the Parkway Village Overlay. It has allowed development usually restricted to assemblage of large parcels with strict setbacks in front and back to ensure residential properties are not affected and frontage on Ga. 92 is provided with a pleasant streetscape.
But one size does not fit all, and this is a non-conforming parcel of about 1 acre. Its neighbor to the north is Roswell High School. The large assemblages are built out. The property owners have owned it since 1989, long before the Parkway Village Overlay was even conceived.
The owners, who live in Florida, are required to come back in November after "more study." This is the time to work with a property owner and show some flexibility. The overlay has done its job. Now the few remaining parcels — mostly residential homes — through geography and personal wishes have remained just what they are, exceptions.
With build-out of large parcels, the threat of creating a precedent physically does not exist. And as a nonconforming parcel, it can't be used as a precedent either. But old habits die hard, and the council seems bent on taking those golden parking spaces.
• In Alpharetta, a builder has come forward on Canton Street with a project that will turn boarded-up and vacant houses into 30 luxury townhouses and garden manors. The developer came to ask for a reduction in density. Instead of the 39 units under the current zoning, he would build 30.
Since there is a glut of townhouses on the market, the developer wants to build more marketable garden manor houses that would have the same living space in two stories instead of three. He agreed to build nine of the three-story, attached units to front the street and maintain uniformity of appearance, even though they are less marketable. The price point of the homes will still be in the same low $400,000 range, a significant reduction in any profitability for the project.
His company is willing to take the loss of the additional units to find buyers who balk at a three-story product. They need to simply market the property.
One councilman said he couldn't understand why the builder would agree to lower his density – despite the builder's perfectly lucid explanation – unless it was simply to extend the deadline for the start of the project.
Apparently he has been oblivious to the economic crisis in the housing market over the last two years. His solution was to include a condition that if the project did not begin in one year, the zoning would revert to the higher density as an "incentive" to remove the offending eyesores of the boarded-up houses.
Only Councilman John Monson spoke up to point out the city would be shooting itself in the foot by returning the 4-acre property to a higher density. So instead, council voted to have it revert to the single-family zoning status that existed before the council's own Historic District Master Plan.
Why? Council is tired of citizen complaints about the eyesores on Canton.
With money tight, the builder understandably wants to remove the offending homes when he can begin clearing the property for construction.
Now he has the added burden of this Draconian demand, but he is no less constrained by the unwillingness of banks to loan any of the trillions given them in bailout money. They already own thousands of properties they can't move and see little reason to finance new construction. But here is a builder willing to try.
Does Alpharetta embrace him, a proven developer in the city who has shown he builds a good product? No, the council insulted his integrity and ignored market forces that conspire against him. And they still shoot themselves in the foot in the bargain.
The point is this: Both cities are correct in holding close to zoning laws to protect the interests of the public. But does it make sense to hold up a $12 million project that is faced with market forces it cannot control? He is the white knight who wants to remove the eyesores.
Should a commercial property owner of long standing be asked to choose between the Scylla and the Charybdis?
Now is the time to be more of a partner with people who are investing in the community. Cities can remain vigilant and still work in concert with businesses that are trying to be successful contributors to the quality of life in our communities.
It requires a shift in perspective. The glory days are over. People need the tax relief that new development and redevelopment can bring. Now would be a good time to start.
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