Commercial district revitalization and return on public investment

One of the things that bugs me about local economic development is that elected and appointed officials don't seem to understand it much. Certain types of government funding add value and spur subsequent independent private investment and other types of funding do not. Ideally, each dollar you spend generates significantly more in private investment.

As Rolf Goetze makes the point in Building Neighborhood Confidence (1976), although referring to neighborhood stabilization, that government programs shouldn't be fostering dependence but rather spurring people to continue to invest in their neighborhood--"building confidence in remaining in and investing in their neighborhood."

This is why I don't have much truck with complaints about "gentrification." The problem most urban neighborhoods have, if they have problems, is the lack of investment.

The solution to lack of investment isn't whining or glorifying being poor, it's investment.

The solution to dealing with displacement is to develop programs to reintegrate the disadvantaged into the economy in substantive ways (such as along the lines discussed in the textbook Community Economic Development Handbook) as well as extracting some housing outside of market forces through the development of alternative ownership structures, either portfolio investment within nonprofit housing organizations, land trusts, cooperatives, etc.

Also see this very old blog entry, "More about contested spaces--gentrification which derives from something I first wrote in 2004.

The other thing to remember is that it took many decades for neighborhoods and commercial districts to decline, so we have to recognize that it will take a long time for these places to be improved. It takes even longer when we don't know what we are doing, and we fail to learn from previous practice, not to mention best practice, and we put in minimal amounts of money so that it makes improvement very hard to come about, and we don't direct money in ways where it can have great impact so that money gets wasted.

So, it's very interesting to read stories around the country about how in these economic times, many communities are looking into dissolving their commercial district revitalization programs ("Downtown development authorities help make city centers cool, but can West Michigan communities afford to keep them?" from the Grand Rapids Press in Michigan ) even while other articles acknowledge that it takes a long time, more than one decade to truly see results ("Strengthening Manitowoc's 'heart' a challenge: Revitalizing downtown Manitowoc won't happen overnight; takes work, planning and money" from the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter in Wisconsin and "Development plan still reshapes downtown 10 years later" from the Oshkosh Wisconsin Northwesterner).

Meanwhile the State of Maryland is working to change the state historic preservation tax credit to a sustainable communities tax credit program. (Press release from Preservation Maryland)

It's a good move, because Baltimore City garnered most of the credits--because they have the most buildings of any jurisdiction in the state that are eligible because it is the oldest center city and once was one of the nation's major manufacturing centers--and this upset legislators from other jurisdictions (sadly, as they clearly don't understand what Jane Jacobs wrote in Economy of Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations about the necessity of center cities to thrive as they are the centers for metropolitan economies).

The state historic tax credit in Maryland generated more than $9 in direct private investment for every $1 in credit. The Maryland heritage areas program generates more than $40 for every $1 of state investment.

Yet these kinds of programs, and tourism support programs generally, are always under attack, even in decent economic times.

It makes absolutely no sense to me.

Also see "MAIN STREET NICHES IN A MASS SALES WORLD" (1/11/04) column by Neal Peirce. From the article:

Successful Main Street programs, Rand notes, take years to mature -- four or five years to change attitudes and build initial confidence, five to ten or more years for owners to start reinvesting seriously, 15 or 20 for the full recovery and new growth to take solid root.