Cocoposts

Giving Sprawl a Pass

The El Paso Times story won't surpise some people but others will be moved just by the title (East El Paso Sprawl:  Boom Strains Services, City Coffers) as it represents admission of a problem that the building industry still flatly denies - the high cost of suburban growth to tax-funded systems like water, schools and police.

First, we don't have sprawl, Doug Schwartz, Southwest Land Development CEO

El Paso developer and chamber representatives repeat familiar homebuilder memes about growth paying for itself in sales tax and choice bits of flimsy about how the market is always right and the big picture is all net gain. But the story contains pesky specifics.

John Balliew, El Paso Water Utilities vice president of operations and technical services said "The company recovers less than a third of the full cost from developers" (...)  Now if the development is outside the service area, the recovery cost can be as low as 10 percent, said Felipe Lopez, a utility engineer who administers development agreements for new subdivisions. The rest is "passed along to all the other customers," Balliew said.

Largest Landowners

The names apparently include a New Mexican. Here's the Land Report 100 - Largest Landlowners list.* This is not by weight.

A person with same name as one of them, Number 72, is presently requesting public funds through a LEDA grant from the Bernalillo County Commission to build another set of big boxes in an alfalfa field he owns at Coors and Rio Bravo Boulevards.

The zoning for the site was approved years ago when Teresa Cordova, stalwart protectress of valley values, was in office. As I recall, one of the arguments at the time was how the County needed its own retail development.  That huge Walmart right next door was in the evil City. (Say it with a hissss.)  So Wal-Mart didn't count except as a "changed community condition" that bolstered the argument for the conversion of more prime farmland into yet another speculative real estate venture. Sad but true.

 

 

* In spite of my much coveted position as primary steward of Whitelodge and Weed Ranch, I'm not on the list.

 

The Fantastic Fraudulent Floating Land Grant

The Peralta Grant scheme to defraud the government and the people of Arizona was cooked up by a clever opportunist named “Doc” Willing. Willing died long before realizing his dream and shortly after involving a St Louis real estate developer named James Addison Reavis. Reavis saw it through to the bitter end when he was found guilty by the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims in Santa Fe and sentenced to a fine and two years in prison. He died penniless in Denver in 1914.

The huge claim stretched from Silver City to Phoenix and encompassed the territory’s richest
 land. At the time Reavis got involved, the substance of the audacious movida consisted of old 
papers in a burlap sack and some carvings on a rock near Casa Grande. Like some other slick promoters and profiteers of the era, Reavis was from Missouri.  He had
 enlisted in the Confederacy but surrendered to Union forces after forging furlough papers.
Thomas Catron later recalled that Reavis had served in his artillery regiment but left to get
 married and never returned.

While the outcome of the scheme was ultimately unsuccessful, Reavis profited for years from
quitclaim deeds sold to settlers and miners.

To be continued...

Source: The Peralta Grant: James Addison Reavis and the Barony of Arizona. Donald M. Powell, University of Oklahoma Press, 1960.

Second Home Summer People

In our little corner of Colorado, the summer home phenomenon is not all about the wealthy. This subdivision is over fifty years old and those cabins that haven't been sold and converted to year-round use for town commuters, are in varying stages of decay. They are very rarely inhabited by the very aged original summer residents.  Usually it's some combination of their children and grandchildren or new owners who listen wide-eyed to stories about the antics of our fathers and grandfathers. Arizonans, New Mexicans, Texans, Canadians, Oklahomans, and the rare native Coloradan all mix it up* for a couple weekends in the summer.

These acquaintances and "howdy neighbor" relations involve those of varying political persuasions - more tolerable because exposure is limited to a week or weekend. That's how I'm now friends with a bible-thumping Baptist missionary Texan.  And she now associates with a uppity lefty Liberal.  We, after all, have more in common than we do with the bears and enjoy the opportunity to study each other like science specimens.

She asked about what I retired from - government work.  What did you do? Is that about entitlements for poor people?  I said it involved things like figuring out where to put the water lines and who gets garbage contracts.  Then I started getting a little bothered and said it involved asking rich white people where they want their parks.  I was talking a little too loud and began morphing into my Mother, who sat on this same patio arguing politics with summer people. Only the quality of the beer has improved.

 To be continued...

* I'd say "hook-up" but that would imply interstate orgies, or something.

Twenty-Five Years in One Survey Comment

My former profession, city planning, has a professional organization that purports to represent the field.  When I retired I let my membership lapse and have since been subject to a barrage of renewal notices. Finally I got an email survey that asked why I hadn't renewed. 

Most of it was innocuous - ratings of programs and publications and typical tedium. Multiple choices among  dull dumb answers.  Then, at the end at last, space to write comments.  Speaking for all of us, I figured, I'd let the silly suits behind the survey know what I really thought. 

After completing the survey I read other respondents' comments.  I grew flushed and pink - like I'd just tweeted on the size of a legislator's ass or hat.

The vast majority of fallen former members wrote of onerous dues and continuing education requirements.  They complained about the stupidity of the survey questions, invoicing errors, lousy coffee at the national conference and how that membership pin put a big hole in my blouse.

I wrote this:

I've retired and don't intend to work in the planning profession again until hell freezes over or this corporate hegemony abates.  Whichever comes first.  It was a great ride.  Loved the politics - a real scream, especially the last few years.  Our profession has been, and will continue to be, dominated by the building industry.  And by the private property obsessed, greed fueled, endless growth paradigm that has screwed this country.

This sentiment was expressed by another.

You have ignored the recession and what it means to our profession. 

Wal-Mart Decade

 A post by Paul Krugman attributes a data bump to Wal-Mart and muses about why Europe didn't have a similar bump.  Thereafter ensued rather off-topic Wal-Mart bump envy, fear and loathing in comments.  Like this:

walmart has been unsuccessful in europe--it's not about land use. it's about culture. europeans want higher quality goods and a pleasant store in which to shop. europeans also like to patronize local shops where the service is personal.

No it isn't, you snob.  Our poor taste is not why we have Wal-Mart.  It's about cheap energy, US transportation networks, car dependency, and hugely scaled transfer facilities, stores and parking lots on cheap land. 

In part Krugman says:
 

Van Ark’s data point to a huge surge between 1995 and 2004 in US productivity, not so much in producing goods as in distributing them. And we know what that’s about: Wal-Mart and other big box stores.

I’m not denigrating these productivity gains. What’s interesting, though, is that if you’re looking for a story about the relative American revival from 1995 until recently, it’s not so much a broad, generic economy thing as it is a story of one particular innovation that for whatever reason — land use regulations? — Europe was slow to imitate.

The major question is how an economist can call distribution "production."  But since he mentioned  land use regulation I got all hot under the collar and had to be the first to comment.  It didn't go well.

cocolaboca
Santa Fe NM
January 29th, 2011
10:16 am
The reason is less about land use regulations than land use. The sprawl paradigm enables Wal-Mart scale. Such land use's relationship with regulation is far more complicated, (ie attempts to curtail sprawl or argument that regulations encourage it in the first place.)

Whaa?  I promise I wasn't drunk but it makes no sense to me now either.   And that near nonsense was read by Paul Krugman.  I could have said it much much more clearly, like Bart did at the very same time.

Bart

NY

January 29th, 2011

10:16 am

Suburbia + housing bubble = Wal-Mart

County Economic Development Movida

Your tax dollars at work on a new intersection to benefit speculative real estate development on an alfalfa field in the South Valley.  The Albuquerque Journal story smells so bad I need a face mask.

County administrators asked commissioners to tap $1 million in economic-development funds for the Coors and Las Estancias intersection for traffic signals, road improvements, turn lanes, curbs and gutters.    ... It's not clear whether that would cover the full cost of the intersection or if landowners would be asked to chip in.

Chip in? The developers should pay for these improvements as part of a Subdivision Improvement Agreement (SIA) required when the plat was approved. 

(T)he South Valley is home to enough residents to comprise one of New Mexico's largest cities, yet it still lacks bookstores, coffee shops and other businesses.

But it is a regular valhalla for tire shops.

"I'd like to see some significant development in the valley," De La Cruz said.

Hey, what do you call that enormous Wal-Mart next door?   In the City.  

The wisdom of constructing more commercial space in an overbuilt market next to a super Wal-Mart is highly questionable.  Calling it economic development and subsidizing it with tax dollars is outrageous.  

Does Bernalillo County use economic development as a kind of slush fund for favorite projects of Commissioners?  Inquiring minds already know.

 

       

Nuevo Rancho Viejo

The Rancho Viejo development, totalling about 12,500 acres south of Santa Fe, has been sold.  (Santa Fe New Mexican) Like other big real estate deals, ownership is thoroughly obscured by corporate identity, in this case,  Univest-Rancho Viejo LLC - whoever the hell that is.*  They purchased the "community" from Ariz.-based SunCor Development Co for an undisclosed amount.  The book value was placed at $400 million at one time.  

Referring to a "community" as being bought and sold has a company town ring to it and this gets clarified in the article.

The development has some 1,200 homes as well as parks, playing fields and a central plaza. There are three separate homeowner associations that own all of development's open spaces, recreational areas and six-plus miles of trails. These areas are not included in the transaction.

"We hope some of the past plans as presented to us now will be completed by the new owner," said Bruno Keller, president of the North Homeowners Association.

And no worries there, right?  Right?

 

*This could be anyone for all hapless homeowners know.  (Could it be SAAAtan?) The New Mexican story states the company includes a group of original owners - whoever the hell that is.

Behind Growth - Dead Regulations

Housing regulations, more than those that bind standard businesses, explain the Sunbelt’s population growth.

 That's the conclusion of economist Edward L. Glaeser in the NYTimes Economix.  He uses census information to frame his idea that land use regulations impact housing supply and a cheap housing supply is the measure of a triumphant city - the title of his book.  The construction industry must adore this guy.   Here's the money paragraph:

A rich body of research shows that regulation, which is intense in the Northeast and California but lax in the Sunbelt, explains why housing is supplied so readily down South. The future shape of America is being driven not by quality of life or economic success but by the obscure rules regulating local land use.

 

The rules are so obscure he can't name them.  Except for passing reference to the absence of zoning in Houston, the specific regulations constraining urban triumphalism remain consistently mysterious straight through his links. 

I'm no Paul Krugman, but this jumps the shark for urban theory.  It doesn't make sense even if you completely ignore the role of finance, speculative money, public bonds and subsidies for utility and water system expansions and road projects.

If New York and Massachusetts want to stop losing congressional seats, then they must revisit the rules that make it so difficult to build. High prices show that the demand would be there if the supply is unleashed.

Unleash the hounds on the planner!

Up Slots at Downs

Predatory addiction machines in a high density urban population - what could possibly go wrong?  Anti-gambler Guy Clark points to Governor Richardson's latest movida sin verguenza on behalf of his buddy Paul Blanchard.  (Albuquerque Journal)  Dr. Clark doesn't think it's a good idea to plop lots-o-slots into a low income hood.  But he's not holding any cards.

How did we ever get to this point?  Why is horse racing - the sport of Kings - intimately connected and dependent on despicable slot machines?  It's like taking a GameBoy trail riding.  Hell, at this scale it's like strapping Xbox to the saddle.  Sick and sad.

Second point, unrelated;  the redevelopment potential of the State Fair land between San Pedro and Louisiana Boulevards in Albuquerque's northeast heights is consistently over-estimated.  Both proponents and opponents of moving the Expo out of town have the misguided notion that a fabulous scheme for reuse will materialize.*  Yet there is no historical precedent to give cause for optimism. On the contrary, experience indicates that sale or lease of this public land will be decades long and fraught with complexities, not to mention politics. 

*It will involve unicorn sales and rentals.  They don't shit and can use the race track as a landing strip.