Downtown vs. neighborhoods

(this post needs to be read while listening to Petula Clark's song "Down Town.")


Photo by Jason Hawkes for the Washington, DC Convention & Tourism Corporation (WCTC).

I have been thinking of this for a few days because a college student sent a notice to an e-list asking for comments on her video documentary (in progress) about the neglect of neighborhoods and the impact of "gentrification" on Columbia Heights. I didn't think it expressed a very nuanced understanding of the issues.

The "problem" with downtown vs. neighborhood revitalization is that spending money on a central business district in a city like Washington makes money, while neighborhood revitalization doesn't have near the same rate of return.

I don't know what the average "profit" is per citizen-resident in DC, because income and full sales taxes have to be included in the equation. Most communities rely on property taxes. In those cases, a typical office property has a profit of about 55 cents/dollar of tax; a multiunit dwelling about 10 cents; and a single family household costs 25 cents for every dollar collected.

Yesterday's Post ran a story about Downtown DC, "Downtown Is Enjoying Renaissance, Report Finds," which states:

The study by the Downtown DC Business Improvement District found that the District's central business district contributed $624 million in tax revenue over the past fiscal year...

I think the figure is something like the property in downtown provides about 18% of DC's total tax revenue, but represents about 2% of the land mass of the city.

This didn't come cheap necessarily, as the article points out that:

Yet the report also points out that the development did not come without a cost to taxpayers. From 1996 to 2005, according to the study, the District spent $400 million supporting a host of projects, including Verizon Center, Gallery Place, the new convention center and the Sidney Harman Hall theater.

Still, that's "only" $40 million/year, with a fabulous economic return. As the article states:

"These public investments worked to leverage $10 billion in private investment, which has produced a public benefit to the entire city," the report said.

Now, I am not saying don't focus on neighborhood revitalization. I think that this is another case of either an expectation that there would be trickle down improvements, or a failure in the then preferred mode of neighborhood revitalization--urban renewal, to have the desired impact. Plus the fact that government funding of all programs is political, and especially at the neighborhood level, it's difficult to (1) award money first to the places that have the greatest potential for success, (2) rather than spread it around on the basis of equity and/or satisfying supporters.

The funny thing if you think about all the urban renewal plans in the city other than the Southwest Urban Renewal Plan (which was one of the two test cases for the program of government-initiated urban renewal in the United States), only the plan for H Street NE was almost fully realized, and to some extent most of the plan for 7th Street NW.

On H Street/Benning Road, millions of dollars were expended in successfully realized projects including Hechinger Mall, the demolition of the Trinidad trolley barn and its replacement with garden apartments for lower income residents, the Pentacle Apartments, two senior citizen apartment towers of 8 or more stories, Delta and Capitol Towers, the construction of a parking fronted strip shopping center, H Street Connection, the two big office buildings on the 600 block, the bridge over the railyard, and the construction of new brick rowhouses in place of "blighted" frame houses on the 700 block of 8th Street and the 700 and 800 blocks of 10th Street, plus another similar project on the 700 block of 3rd Street. (The only major project that wasn't constructed was John Hechinger's plan to build more mall, "Hechinger II." In the late 1980s he demolished the old Sears on Bladensburg Road, but the project never moved beyond that. I don't know how we classify the Children's Museum.)

And on 7th Street NW, most of the buildings destroyed in the riots (with the exception of land intended first for UDC and then for the Convention Center) were replaced with multiunit housing--most small buildings no taller than 3 stories, with a few exceptions. (I don't think that the Shaw Urban Renewal Plan was as fully realized as the H Street plan, even though many other projects were constructed, ranging from the schools to the Daniel Library, and the Giant Supermarket at O Street NW.)

Whether or not you agree with the end result, a great deal was accomplished as a result of these plans. But I don't think you can say that the neighborhoods were substantively improved in terms of being vibrant, active, safe places with walkable thriving neighborhood retail districts. One could argue that by comparison other neighborhoods in the city where "historic preservation" was the implemented plan (with the exception of Anacostia) improved more successfuly. But in any case, the conditions supporting or hindering revitalization for specific neighborhoods makes it hard to compare neighborhoods in such fashion.

There is no question though that the solution was to have more economically well-off residents.

The question is do you get such residents by improving their economic circumstances (see this review of Temali's Community Economic Development Handbook for an idea of how to implement such an approach), not necessarily their physical conditions, or by attracting new residents that possess the demographics that you are seeking.

Many people argue that the city has focused on the attraction of new higher income residents at the expense of building the social and economic worth of existing residents through best in class education and workforce development programs.

Besides the justifiable concerns that people express when they see their neighborhoods change, this is the basic question and the root of a sense of injustice that we see expressed all the time right now about the changes, and is reflected in these past Post articles:

-- A Bittersweet Renaissance (Shaw)
-- Letters to the editor in response, A Disturbing Snapshot Of Shaw
-- One Urban Panorama Fades, Another Rises (14th and T Streets NW, part one)
-- A Boom Giveth, and It Taketh Away (14th and T Streets NW, part two)
-- Whose H Street Is It, Anyway?

(Note that until about 2002, it was not believed that many close in DC neighborhoods, including H Street NE, would revitalize without the assistance of significant additional help, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars previously expended and all the various programs implemented and later scuttled over the years.)