The Zoning Guru follows a number of planning-related blogs across the U.S. One of my favorites is Urban Review STL, a blog authored by Steve Patterson that covers St. Louis, Missouri architecture, planning, design, and re-development topics.  Steve’s writing style is engaging, he has a photographer’s eye, and his posts often cover topics that apply equally well to other urban communities.

(more…)

The enclosed shopping mall, an uniquely American retail innovation, was the “future of retail” in the 1950s and 60s.  Shopping centers became an icon of suburban living in the 1970s and 80s, before beginning their slowly accelerating decline in the 1990s.  Today, the growing number of dead or dying shopping malls and centers are seen as symbols of the downside of “suburban sprawl.”

One example of this pattern is the Plaza Pasadena shopping center, an enclosed mall established originally as the cornerstone of an urban revitalization effort in Pasadena, California.  See “A Case Study in Successful Failure” for more on the birth, life, death, and future of this mall.

From a planning perspective, local communities can no longer assume that shopping centers will…
(more…)

Making the numbers work to finance rehabilitation and adaptive re-use of a historic building is often a struggle for property owners in Michigan.  For this reason, federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits have played a large part in the revitalization of many historic downtowns and neighborhoods across the state.

Historic rehabs can cost significantly more than building a similar size new building on a vacant “greenfield” site.  Such tax credits have been used by property owners and developers to ‘bridge the gap,’ and have often meant the difference between a vibrant streetscape and a long-vacant eyesore.

These credits can be used to offset the added costs, or to improve return on investment.  Such credits are also transferrable, so a project involving historic rehabilitation may be able to attract additional investment from banks or other institutions looking for tax credits to offset against other income.

More information on specific state historic preservation programs and incentives can be found on the state website (click here).

The State of Michigan has long recognized that rehabbing a historic building for new businesses and residents can provide significant benefits to a community.  Recently, in the midst of a very difficult budget year, the state legislature managed to…
(more…)

To some in local government, the economic downturn and reduced tax revenues may raise the question of whether it’s worthwhile to fund local economic development initiatives.  The best answer is that providing for local economic development is an important way of ensuring that your community is friendly to businesses and can quickly respond on a local company’s behalf at critical times.

For example, Building Place recently read about a high technology company that experienced catastrophic damage to one of its clean rooms when the town’s water line burst.  The flood damage threatened the company’s ability to stay in operation, and therefore threatened job losses and reduced tax revenues for the town.  Fortunately, the local economic development office responded quickly and…

(more…)

“Communities are facing new challenges in attaining economic growth, increasing wealth, and improving quality of life for residents.”

As part of our bedtime reading, we at Building Place have been reading the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publication entitled, ‘Economic Development and Smart Growth: 8 Case Studies on the Connections between Smart Growth Development and Jobs, Wealth, and Quality of Life in Communities.’

Here are some excerpts from the report, along with a few thoughts of our own (emphasis added)…

(more…)

Too often local elected and appointed officials feel overrun by the fast-moving flames of budgeting, personnel issues, and other public management challenges – to the point that they can do little more than react to the most urgent crisis confronting them.

Action on the “worthy” but not necessarily urgent things that need doing in a community (those that contribute most to achieving their community’s goals and priorities) get set aside or postponed for “another day.”

Economic development was one of those worthy but not urgent things a community needs to do, at least until Michigan’s current recession took hold.  For more officials, economic development has now also been added to “urgent” list, with good reason.

(more…)