You Can’t Go Home Again – Part 3, Missed Opportunities

I recently traveled to the Pacific Northwest where I once lived for eighteen years.  The trip allowed me to observe how urbanism has advanced, or failed to advance, in several communities that I knew well once upon a time.  I’m distilling my insights into a series of “observations”, of which Part 1 on stroads and induced traffic and Part 2 on the long-term impact of land-use missteps were previously published.

This post, I’ll look at missed opportunities for urbanism in Central Oregon

Observation #4: Urbanism opportunities shouldn’t be dismissed by flawed logic - In my previous post, I wrote about how a large proposed residential/recreation community on the westside of Bend wasn’t approved by the Planning Commission, in large part because of concerns over a mixed-use core.   After nearly twenty-five years, I don’t recall all of the concerns expressed by the Planning Commission.  But I clearly remember a comment by the mayor.

The mayor played on the softball team fielded by the firm where I worked.  He played shortstop while I manned third base.  So we had occasional opportunities to chat about municipal matters, typically during pre-inning warm-ups.

One game, I broached the subject of the proposed project.  The mayor had a ready answer.  He had reviewed the conceptual plan and noted that the mixed-use core was larger in area than the entire Bend downtown.  And he felt that it wasn’t right to challenge the pre-eminence of downtown.

In 1990, there were two recently-built shopping centers on the north end of Bend, each of which had more acreage than downtown.  Furthermore, within a few years the city would approve a massive retail project on the eastside of town that would dwarf downtown.  So it wasn’t that the mayor believed new retail shouldn’t challenge downtown, only that any new retail shouldn’t look like a downtown.

I still regret not being able to muster the obvious response that the mayor’s comment deserved.  The layout of the Bend downtown had evolved over a hundred years and reflected a model that was time-tested.  The new shopping centers were guesses about what would work for the shoppers of the future.  Nor were the guesses particularly good, with all of the shopping centers having undergone major renovations since that time, while the downtown has continued to serve the community with limited alterations.

Any right-thinking mayor should have been thrilled to have new development that mimicked his successful downtown.   And I kick myself for not having the words to express that sentiment while fielding warm-up grounders.

For the record, the mayor wasn’t much of a shortstop.  Nor was I much of a third-baseman.

Observation #5:  Good urbanist intentions can go astray in the marketplace – Even if the Planning Commission had approved the large westside project, it’s very possible that mixed-use core would still have not come in existence.  The marketplace can often subvert urbanist intentions.

During my final years in Bend, a long-time sawmill a short distance south of downtown finally surrendered to the changing timber economy.  The site was sold to a local developer who put forth an aggressive plan for redevelopment, including an appealing blend of retail, office, and residential.  It had the potential to replace the missed westside opportunity.

By the time, I moved to California, only a small portion of the development had proceeded.  I recall a restaurant, a movie theatre, and a few offices.  I often thought of the site and hoped that it had met its goals.

It hadn’t.  Upon my visit to Bend, one of my first meetings was with a former client who suggested we meet in the Old Mill District.  I was distressed by what I saw.  Retail and offices were there in abundance but, except for a hotel with its transient population, there were no residents in the core of the property.

A solid network of non-vehicular paths allowed a good number of bicyclists and walkers to visit the Old Mill District from nearby residential areas, but nonetheless the predominant mode for reaching the project, and the mode on which the retail relied, was automobile.

 As a result, the retail area, although having an attractive street appearance, was backed by large parking lots.  The Old Mill District had become a lifestyle center, a visual simulation of a downtown, but without the soul, durability, or sustainability of a downtown or a fully-realized mixed-use area.  And as is typical of most lifestyle centers, many of the retail tenants were national chains.  There was only a smattering of local businesses.

The developer deserved credit for retaining many of the physical elements of the historical sawmill, but not for the form of the development.

A few Bend conversations confirmed my expectation.  Faced with the debt burden from property acquisition and the reluctance of lenders to support mixed use, the developer allowed his project vision to be tweaked, eliminating residential in the core.  It’s a pattern I’ve seen elsewhere, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing.

To be fair, there were still pockets of residential, including a charming rowhouse development near the north end of the Old Mill District, but none very close to the core.

Next time, I’ll write about a Bend project that did meet its mixed-use objective.

(Clarification: To avoid getting sidetracked into regulatory details, I implied above that the Bend Planning Commission was considering a project application for the large westside project.  Oregon readers will know that I’ve misstated the process.  Under Oregon law, Planning Commissions are legislative bodies, not quasi-judicial.

In this case, the Planning Commission was considering a text amendment to the zoning code, creating a new zone under which a project application could be submitted.  The actual application would have been heard by a Hearings Officer.  But the Planning Commission refusal to approve the text amendment stopped the project just as surely as a hearing denial would have.

The limited role of planning commissions is a quirk of Oregon law that I think is often beneficial to the land-use process.  But I didn’t want to sidetrack the discussion on this fine point of law.  Hence this parenthetical footnote.)

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Mixed Use Receives More Disrespect

I’ve written before about the Jane Jacobs’ vision of mixed use, her ideal neighborhood combination of buildings, jobs, and people where the sidewalks are occupied from dawn until long past dark, offering a near-continual public place of safety and involvement.  And I’ve written before about how hard it is to achieve a neighborhood that even comes close. 

Jacobs’ prototypical mixed-use neighborhood was remarkably well-suited to mixed use.  As she looked from the window of her Greenwich Village townhouse during the writing of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, she gazed upon a setting that was a residential neighborhood by day, with a good mixture of streetfront retail.  In the evening, a convivial neighborhood bar defined the neighborhood, with longshoremen unwinding after late shifts along the nearby Hudson River and an early Bob Dylan doing occasional sets.  It was an unusual confluence of uses and jobs that few places can match.

But the fact that Jacobs’ neighborhood was remarkable shouldn’t deter us from trying to emulate it as best we can.  Instead, we seem to have forgotten that mixed use remains a desirable goal.  Indeed, we seem to have forgotten what mixed use even means.  Instead, we often describe a drivable suburban shopping center bundled with a small dental office as mixed use.   It’s emphatically not the mixed use of Jane Jacobs. 

A pair of recent events reminded me of our growing lack of respect for the goal of mixed use. 

I’ve been involved with a proposed mixed use project.  With a location near downtown and with residential units over streetfront retail, it legitimately met the local standard for mixed use.  But it only began to really feel like Jane Jacobs’ mixed use when the developer made two key decisions.  He dedicated one of the buildings to senior housing.  And instead of paying the in lieu fee for affordable housing, he decided to include affordable units within his project, mingling them with the market rate units.

With those two changes, the potential sidewalk life went way up.  The market rates units were likely to create an evening presence on the sidewalks.  Seniors were more likely to be out and about during the midday hours.  And the affordable unit people were more likely to work shifts other than eight-to-five, filling the sidewalks during other parts of the day.  Although seniors plus affordable plus market rate wasn’t Jacobs’ original example, the developer had created the potential for an effective mixed use setting.  I was eager to see it come to fruition

However, the unconventional nature of the project worked against it in the financial market.  With the recession in full swing, the developer couldn’t secure construction funds.  Potential investors were interested, but were uncomfortable with the senior housing and affordable elements of the project.

Several possible investors asked city hall about eliminating the senior living and the affordable units.  In a perfect world, I would have expected the city planners to have looked for ways to preserve the mixed use opportunities of the approved project, exploring alternatives that would have motivated the investors to participate in the project while still retaining the best aspects of the approved project. 

Instead, the planners assured the investors that the senior living and the affordable units could be easily removed from the entitlements.  Presumably, the planners were trying to encourage immediate investment in the community.  But they were effectively throwing away a potentially thriving mixed use neighborhood in exchange for near-term construction dollars.  It was a trade that Jacobs would have denounced.

As it turned out, even with the city’s surrender, funding remained difficult.  The project remains unbuilt.  It’s still possible that the initial vision will be followed.  But if that is to happen, it will apparently need to be despite city hall rather than because of it.  And that’s a shame.

In a similar story, I recently attended a public meeting at which a proposed project was discussed.  It was a nondescript project, a medium-sized chain retail store with a second building of small offices for rent.  Few folks would be able to walk to the project from their homes.  It was a prime example of drivable suburban development, although the project was more the result of drivable suburbia than the cause.

When the city planner described the project status to the committee, he noted that the General Plan designation had to be changed from Business Park to Mixed Use before entitlement.  Think about that.  A project that has absolutely nothing in common with the Jane Jacobs’ vision of mixed use must be designated as mixed use in order to be approved.  It was proof that the zoning code and general plan had lost all sense of what should be meant by mixed use.

And yet nobody on the committee even blinked.  The upside down use of the term “mixed use” seemed to mean nothing to any of the committee members.

To be fair to the committee, their interest was only a peripheral element of the project, not the entitlement process itself.  But the story nonetheless shows that the Jane Jacobs’ vision of mixed use, which should be a guiding light in the 21st century land use world, has been lost.  And that bothers me deeply.

There is a little bit of good news on the mixed use front.  The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), in a move that is far too late and still not enough, but at least in the right direction, has made FHA funding for mixed use buildings somewhat less restrictive.  After eighty years of public policies that suppressed mixed use through the aptly-named “form follows finance” mechanism, it’s a good change.  But much more is needed.  Bob Dylan would probably agree.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)