Two months
ago, I wrote about the need for good teamwork as a requirement for effective
urbanism. Further cogitation led me to realize
that I had good examples from my own career of the point I was trying to
make. Or perhaps I should say bad
examples as the teamwork element was notably missing in the examples I’ll begin
offering today.
In my examples,
I’ll obscure the city, the project, and the individuals involved. There are several reasons for this editorial
decision, but the primary one is that I believe the individuals were
fundamentally good people responding to a flawed collective mindset. And my goal is to improve the mindset, not to
castigate individuals who were seduced by it.
My first
example was a moderate-sized mixed-use urban project.
I’ve often
written about my concerns with CEQA (California Environmental Quality
Act). While I’m happy with the
environmental improvements that have occurred under CEQA and hope that we can
continue along the path set by CEQA, I have discomfort with several aspects of
the CEQA process.
Foremost
among those is the “completeness” process.
So that a city can have all necessary data in hand to prepare the
environmental documents within CEQA timelines, the city can deem a land-use application
incomplete until all required data has been submitted.
The process
makes complete sense when the missing information is a traffic study or a hazardous
material remediation plan. But it veers
into absurdity when the incompleteness item is a question about whether the
pilasters are orangeish-pink or pinkish-orange.
Of course, there
is a huge amount of grey area between those extremes, which often usually leads
to lengthy lists of incompleteness items, developer irritation, and extended
negotiation sessions.
This particular
project included a pair of intersections.
One was a modification of an existing intersection along a major
arterial. The other, down a slight hill,
was a new intersection where much of use was to be pedestrian and transit. Any car traffic would be strictly local,
enroute to nearby parking structures.
Accordingly,
I directed that the conceptual design of the downhill intersection lean toward pedestrian
safety, with tighter curb radii, sidewalk bulbs, and decorative
crosswalks. For the uphill intersection,
I omitted some of those details, recognizing that the automobile would be the
primary user.
I would have
preferred if both intersections could have been pedestrian-friendly, but believed
that my compromise accurately reflected the contemporary development zeitgeist.
Almost
everyone in city hall concurred. But one
planner saw it differently and got his concern added to the incompleteness
letter. He thought that the downhill
intersection, where most of the users would be pedestrians, should be designed
to facilitate cars and that the uphill intersection, where most of the users
would be cars, should be designed to facilitate pedestrians.
The intersection
item was my biggest issue with the incompleteness letter, but there were a
number of other items that irritated the developer. So we found ourselves in a meeting room with the
planner and city engineer reviewing the list.
Several
times during the meeting, I returned to the intersection question, finding
different ways to phrase the question to the planner, “So you want us to design
the pedestrian intersection for cars and the car intersection for pedestrians?”
I had no expectation
that the planner would change his mind, but I was hopeful that the city
engineer would intervene, saying something like “If this project reaches
construction design, I’ll require the original concept, not this revision, so
let’s not waste the developer’s time and money.” But the city engineer only pursed his lips
and looked about the room, avoiding eye contact and apparently willing to waste
the developer’s time and money to avoid internal conflict.
Some may ask
why I tried so hard to save making a small change on the conceptual plans. But the change wasn’t small. Even at the initial approval, there must be a
comprehensive infrastructure conceptual plan, including water, sewer, storm
drainage, other utilities, and landscaping.
Making the requested intersection changes would have touched all of
those.
Years
removed from the situation, I don’t have good records on the costs that were
incurred. But $2,000 is a good
guess. Most developers would happily
spend another $2,000 during the entitlement phase if the result was a better
project. But to spend $2,000 on a flawed
concept that would be discarded at the next step? That was ridiculous. Nonetheless, that’s what we were forced to do.
When a
project fails, the development team often points toward a single cause, such as
city intransigence or lack of investors.
It’s a basic human need for a coherent narrative. But the reality is that most projects die of
hundreds of nicks and cuts. Some of the wounds
may be deeper than others, but it’s still a cumulative mortality, not a single
fatal blow.
And that was
the case with this project. Bad timing
in the marketplace, investors waffling on their commitments, a land ownership
dispute. They all combined to end the
project, with the unnecessary intersection redesign only one among many nicks
and cuts. But it was a nick that still
rankles years later. And the reason that
it rankles is that the project would have made the city a better and more
financially resilient place to live.
I had a
second example that I’d planned to share today, but I’ve written long. My next post will return to the topic of
neighborhood block parties that I raised several weeks ago. After that, I’ll offer my second example of
bad teamwork.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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