Having fun with DC development

1. Besides the funding trough that City Council provides developers looking for tax breaks, see Mike Neibauer's article in the Examiner, "Union Station tax break would cost city millions."

2. The Examiner's Jonetta Rose Barras is derisive of liberal activists seeking better oversight of DC publicly owned property and restrictions on sales. See "Conspiracy theorists should get real."

One of the things that occasionally "distresses" me about journalists is that I understand when a typical practitioner or activist doesn't understand the system or the "meta" of how and why things happen. But journalists should. And they, especially columnists, have the opportunity to explain it.

But like Barras, they rarely take the opportunity to do so.

The reality of the "conspiracy" that the activists charge city politicos with, the charge that Barras is derisive of, is that it's merely business as usual. As Harvey Molotch writes in the seminal paper, "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place":

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine.

As long as people fail to examine this system, they will continue, whether they are journalists or activists, to not understand what's going on.

3. I think it's really interesting that the Washington Business Journal reports, in "D.C. narrows list of developers for Stevens Elementary School," that one of the rejected proposals for the use of Stevens Elementary School in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, was a partnership including DC heavy hitter developers and the Capitol Hill Business Improvement District, to house and train homeless adults.

Pretty interesting. Maybe the Foggy Bottom Association should have promoted a similar use at one of the schools in Capitol Hill.

Out of site (sight), out of mind.

4. Even more delicious is the interest of the Washington Convention Center Authority, see "Washington Convention Center Authority wants to finance hotel" also from the WBJ, to provide 100% financing for a convention hotel across from the Convention Center.

Now, while I happen to agree that the city needs such a hotel adjacent to the center in order for it to remain competitive, especially given the voracious competitiveness of the National Harbor in nearby Prince George's County (e.g., see "Disney Buys Land for Future Resort Hotel at National Harbor" and "Grand Vision for National Harbor Takes Form" from the Post), 100% financing should, but I wonder if it will, completely change the deal.

If the "developers" are getting 100% municipal financing, then they should just manage the construction for a fee, and walk away. DC should then contract with Marriott, just like any other property owner, for management of the hotel property.

Interesting too that one of the "developers," used to work for Marriott, spearheading the project.

In the last real estate recession (late 1980s/early 1990s), national companies like Trammell Crow and local developers such as Oliver Carr, to keep people employed, switched to managing construction projects on a fee for service basis.

If the city provides complete financing for the Convention Center hotel, Quadrangle Development and any partners should do the same thing, except maybe some, but small, ownership percentage for the land.