Unplanned - A Walmart Wake-up Call

Walmart's hand at an in-town store First, Walmart showed how unprepared communities were for handling sprawl.  Now, the company is doing the same, but for infill.  On February 21, the Sarasota Herald Tribune ran an article on how Walmart is moving to in-town locations for the next wave of growth.   This is unfolding in Sarasota, where the retail giant has proposed a 24 hour supercenter on one of the last best parcels where the urban bone structure is intact.  The sub-text is really interesting, and serves as a good case study for revealing a crisis in planning.

A global shift in the economy and the nature of work - This may not seem like news, but how this translates to community design is still daunting.  Nobody describes the shift better than Michael Freedman of the California-based firm Freedman, Tung and Sasaki.   Fair warning: approaching Freedman’s work is a commitment of at least 90 minutes.  But he strings the narrative together in a way that not only explains, but also says “and here is what we do next.”   This video is great; if you don’t’ have time, there are jump-in points at minutes 23, 45 and 1:06 (or thereabouts).

In Sarasota, the job base has always been a feast/famine affair driven by retirees and the service industry.  The County is now rethinking jobs both within its strong sectors (housing, tourism) and outside the box (design and niche manufacturing).  All of these require exquisite settings – natural, built and creative.  The fact that the County approved only one of two enclosed malls last year and the city is mulling over a Walmart speaks to the utter disconnect on designing for the future of the work they want.  

Plans, codes and skill sets are stuck in time –The hyper-growth of the 1980s, 90’s and early 00’s, coupled with the massive recession that began in 2006, have left a trail of unattended needs (I am writing this after consulting with other friends who also worked in medium sized towns):

• The Sequence - It is becoming apparent that good planning is like developing a financial portfolio with four questions (planning lingo in parentheses): What do you have (asset mapping)?  What do you want (visioning)?  How do you get there (comprehensive planning)? How are you doing (implementation and feedback)?  Communities tend to jump immediately to the end of the process, which is the biggest gap in planning, in my opinion.
• The Scale - There are a lot of comprehensive plans and zoning codes, but not enough of the middle small area plans that link how the big picture and site level details work together.  This vacuum is made worse by funding cuts.  The anemic role of area planning, in my opinion, is the second biggest gap in planning, particularly for infill and sprawl repair.
• Stale Language - There are a lot of codes and plans out there splashed with 1990’s era smart growth language, but not necessarily enough to guide decisions or counteract older language that makes conventional zoning so detrimental.
• Skill Sets - A lot of skill sets out there were developed in the go-go years of master planned communities, conservation development and complete street definitions that made roads wider (ever seen new bike lanes in Florida?).  Cities are facing square peg/round hole frustration as large lot practices for things like stormwater, parking and loading docks are forced onto in-town locations.
• The Punt  - Sprawl has delayed hard discussions on where to redevelop. Determining the attributes of areas ripe for successful redevelopment and then communicating those results requires amazing skill.

The Crisis in Citizen Planning– This is where Walmart is getting really clever. Zoning codes tend to treat the residential interface with other development projects as a protection zone.  Codes describing neighborhood retail centers are replete with words such as “less intense,” compatible, and “aesthetics.”    Walmart has found an ally in outdated code language:

• Less intense – a sea of parking lot drives down the Floor Area Ratio (or FAR).  Walmart can argue they are less intense than a mixed use center.  Intensity has been defined so narrowly (a measure of density for retail) that 24 hour operations, auto orientation and lack of connections don’t register.
• Compatible – Walmart looks for neighbors who support the store, because once one household declares they can live next to a Walmart – the word compatible is drained of meaning.  
• Aesthetics – In Sarasota, Walmart is promising to paint the store beige.  Aesthetics has morphed into comparative aesthetics (it could be worse) instead of a measure of livability.

In Sarasota, an overarching plan for the neighborhood was rejected after a nasty fight over condos.   Foregoing a plan was seen as a protective move, though it only made the neighborhood more vulnerable because intent and aspirations have now been left open to interpretation by Walmart’s lawyers.  Citizen planning, like a lot of environmental planning, is stuck in a bygone, just-say-no era.  Roger Lewis wrote a timely article on zoning which is a great complement to what is happening in Sarasota.

In summary, the planning crisis is a play in (at least) three parts

• Funding for area plans linking multiple landowners, as well as public and private realms.
• Sequence and scale of planning and updates
• Citizen planning for a future by design.

Walmart tends to be the subject of a lot of exposé.  In a twist, Walmart has imposed an exposé on us: communities are unprepared to carry out better infill as part of a community portfolio.

Examining the Wreckage – The Siren’s Song of Impact Fees

Last week, a former colleague resigned after improperly calculating traffic impact fees.  He is a great guy and always wanted to do better transportation in a county stubbornly hard-wired for road expansion.

I have never really liked impact fees, but that unease was confirmed when I asked a local civic activist last year whether she was concerned about the costs of sprawl.  Her forehead wrinkled and she replied: “No, they [developers] pay impact fees.” 

Impact fees are charged for new construction to pay for off-site capital improvements that are needed by the new development.  Fees are painstakingly calculated to meet several legal tests: (1) a reasonable connection between the "need" for additional facilities and new development, (2) the fee payer must "benefit" in some way from the fee, and (3) the fee must be based on a proportionate "fair share" formula.  The website www.impactfees.com has more detailed information on the world of impact fees.

While it all sounds logical, the way we have developed SW Florida suburbs is anything but.  It does not feel like sprawl is “paying its own way,” but it’s hard to put a finger on why.  

Luckily, Nick Rosenberg wrote an amazing law review article in 2003 titled “Development Impact Fees: Is Limited Cost Internalization Actually Smart Growth?   The article in the Boston College Environmental Affairs delves into the legal requirements a bit more, and explains how fees are marketed as a tool to cover costs and impacts, when in fact they do not.  The 47-page article is worth the read; to me the most thought provoking points are:

1)  "Specific and Uniquely Attributable" Test –   By and large, impact fees cannot fund investments that will be enjoyed by the general public, but rather be specific and attributable to those paying the fees.  For example, a court lifted school impact fees for a 55-and over trailer park because school age children will not live there.  However, if fees are limited to the entity paying the fee (and not general public), no wonder we get these unconnected pods of development designed for denizens of impact fee districts.  As the smart growth world tries to get better connected development with shared amenities, "urban design by impact fee" is working against us.

2) Particularized Benefits & Secondary Costs – Over time, courts have whittled down the scope of costs that can be covered by fees, as explained by these particularly good sentences:

“By taking a strict approach to the particularized benefit question, some courts have precluded fees that address anything more than the most immediate and direct infrastructure needed to facilitate development. Courts and municipalities have been slow to recognize that more indirect services and costs incurred by the community as a result of sprawl development are necessary and, in fact beneficial, to new development.”

The costs to natural resources and other social and health costs are often ignored, under-valued, or camouflaged.  For example, as watersheds are converted, costs such as source water, aquifer recharge, sinkholes, water quality and sediment deposition hardly get noticed in formulae.  In the past there has been little incentive to quantify costs, though the outcome of a recent Supreme Court case out of southern California might change that.  If the Los Angeles Flood Control District is responsible for pollutants dumped by upstream communities, we will likely see a new era in environmental accounting.

3) Induced Sprawl - By allowing developers to pay a fraction for total impacts, the author argues that development that otherwise would not make sense under more rigorous scrutiny, gets approved.  

Peter Katz has been developing a policy initiative (covered in Sustainable Communities Magazine) to put fiscal performance (by way of projected property tax revenue) at the front end of the development approval process by calculating infrastructure "payback" times.  While this is a leap in policy for many cities, comparative scenarios of infrastructure payback mean little where officials and civic activists believe impact fees cover costs. Until secondary and long term costs are better quantified, the true costs of inefficient development patterns to taxpayers will go unaddressed. Exurban developers will point to legally-sanctioned impact fee spreadsheets as the basis for approval.  And they will prevail.

This blog post is not an argument to eliminate impact fees.  At a minimum though, we should rename them for what they are: fees that partially cover impacts.

Explaining Sarasota’s Malls

While the rest of the smart growth world is talking down the mall, we here in Sarasota are going the other direction.   We embrace our enclosed malls.

The map below shows the “Big Three” malls here listed as A, B, and C:

A – University Town Center – This as-yet built mall was plannedas a large mixed use center design by Moule & Polyzoides. Three years ago though, the economy and a new rowing center (a really nice one at that) changed direction of the area.  Long story short, the county let Benderson remove most of the workforce housingand revert to a big enclosed mall.  Saks Fifth Avenue announced they would relocated their store to this new mall, which sits aside I-75. 

B  - Westfield SouthGate – This is the mall that is losing Saks, and one that is not likely to gain a long promised Apple Store.  This mall sits in one of the hottest residential real estate markets going – “West of the Trail.”  The mall is also at a regionally significant intersection, where all four corners (Tamiami and Bee Ridge) are relevant.   A Trader Joe’s will soon open close to the mall.

C  - Westfield Sarasota Square – This large enclosed mall has seen better days, but will get a jolt soon with the addition of a Costco warehouse store.  This mall also sits at an interesting three-way intersection.  Benderson announced it will remake a smaller strip store, though it looks like a Home Depot will not take over an abandoned Kmart site.

There’s a lot going on here, though I didn’t pull it all together until I saw an excellent presentation at the Congress for the New Urbanism conference earlier this year (the entire webcast is here, and includes a lot of work done in Sarasota by Joe Minicozzi and Peter Katz).  Michael Pagano  (begins at 1:02 mark) presented the spatial aspects of revenue structure, which sounds weird, but is really all about how the reliance on one type of tax revenue or another influences both the location and quality of development.   His bottom line was that elected officials always seek to maximize revenue while shifting costs onto neighbors.  As such, the map below compares the "where" of development. The images are from Steve Price.

Jurisdictions are dependent on three main revenue generators: property tax, sales tax, and income tax (though this last group is really small).  Sarasota is property tax dependent (44% of total revenues) on paper, but sales tax grabs attention because of a 1% discretionary tax that stays here and infrastructure funding from sales taxes.

This helps explain some of what is going on, but also raises other issues:

• The University Town Center (A) is located along 75 at the County border to capture non-Sarasota patrons for high-end shopping.  The elimination of housing, because “the economy changed” means workers will likely live and send their kids to school in Manatee County.   A big win for Sarasota– right?  Well no.  The loser is the transportation system, because of the nonsense about the affordable housing picture changing.   For lower middle income families, the housing problem is still stark.  Moreover, lower cost housing is meaningless if the transportation budget is high.
• Southgate Mall’s loss of Saks has generated lots of talk, though the real question is whether an enclosed mall at that location is the best use.  The signals from Trader Joes will also be compelling.  What is needed is a world class area plan that includes the shopping-shed.  The main questions here are housing (hello – think property tax) and transportation infrastructure, which is abysmal for driving, walking and biking.   I think the Trader Joe’s people looked up the walk score (around 70 out of 100 points ), but did not actually walk the death trap that it is.  I talked to a nearby resident recently who would welcome new housing, and there is a fear that things will get worse for this mall before it gets better.  
• Sarasota Square – This area too needs an overarching plan, but it’s too far out of the gates with mall leasing. 

Four Corners and Urban Design – It Didn’t Work for Basketball Either

I grew up in North Carolina in the 1980s which meant we ate up ACC basketball like most families eat cereal. It was during this time that Dean Smith, the legendary coach of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reigned. Known mainly for coaching Michael Jordan and the eponymous Dean Dome, he is also invented the shot clock with his famous Four Corners play. Four Corners was basically the lowest order of basketball strategy – staking men at four corners with a pivot in the middle to wear down the clock. It led to technical wins but was not a sustainable way to go about business.

What does “four corners” have to do with crappy suburban planning? Well, it’s how a lot of mixed use development and redevelopment is taking place. As local governments begin to issue more permits where arterials meet, it feels like it should be coordinated planning, but it’s not – it’s rezoning of quadrants. It’s the lowest level of planning strategy – a player on each corner and crosswalks at the pivotal intersection.

This may not seem like an important story, but it is. I want to tell with an example on the Sarasota-Manatee county border. I used a nifty app called Doodlecast Pro to make this 4 minute presentation. (I made one blunder, noting 1500 square feet instead of linear feet in one place).

What are the main takeaways and why are they important? The obvious:

• Florida’s Development of Regional program has turned out to be more of a phasing and impact fee program – not a coordinated planning program. The DRI for this project is here.
• Form based codes (FBCs) would really have helped this project address the street.
• Walkscores for the housing are 14 – 26, even with the rich mix of uses and higher density housing.

The not so obvious:

The photo above shows where the cross walks are (green) and where they are not (red).

• Form based codes only work where the street is the connective tissue. In this project, the street design along Tuttle serves as a barrier (even to cars).
• My observation from suburban Florida is that asking a developer to design his or her project to address the design of another developer’s project is still an uncertain (and in some cases hostile) concept.
• This project was designed and approved when the Growth Management Act was in its smart growth heyday. As the DRI phases came in, reviewers likely ticked off the boxes. Sidewalks – check. Use mix – check. Multi-family housing- check.  We've got to do something better.
• The skill set for coordinating various parcels and streets is key to actually getting walkability, safety, mobility and economic outcomes. And in places like suburban Florida, it is a skill that never developed for many reasons.  I think planners and land owners want to get better stuff, but the structure of the Growth Management Act, decades-old DRIs, transportation concurrency and the chase for retail as highest and best use spit out pods.  I am interested in hearing from other Florida planners on this.
• The new provisions for sector plans in Florida start at 5000 acres.  Yet great sprawl retrofit will be in much smaller increments.  We need tools nationwide with a focus at 50- 150 acres in urbanizing areas and 150- 500 acres for sprawl repair.

We have a great new resource in Billy Hattaway, the new District 1 Secretary for FDOT. We really need to do some forensic planning with him and others to see what got us the design on Tuttle, the stormwater pond locations, and the DRI sequencing. As communities across Florida take more responsibility over local planning, an exercise in re-designing this intersection would begin building new skills we need to plan areas, not just corners.