Smart Growth: Maryland's Smart Growth Experience: Assessing the Impact

While it is "sold out" you can probably manage to sneak into this presentation tomorrow at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. (I have a prior engagement.)
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Gerrit Knaap, director of The University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, describes the challenge of making Maryland’s innovative smart growth policy a state-wide reality. Mr. Knaap offers insights into why the state's Priority Funding Areas, aimed to concentrate state investment in existing neighborhoods, did not deliver the results that state planners and smart growth advocates had hoped for. He also describes how other states or localities can learn from the Maryland experience and where Maryland goes from here to realize the promise of statewide smart growth.
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I haven't read the paper yet. But it will be interesting to read. There are many many steps that need to be taken in terms of changing state and local policies in order to have on-the-ground impact with smart growth policies.

Plus, they take decades to see the results. Typical commercial district revitalization programs take from 10-20 years to begin to show results. It took as long as 30 years to see "smart growth-like" impacts from transit oriented development at certain WMATA transit stations, while some stations still haven't experienced significant positive change.

I wonder how carefully the paper elucidates the issues.

Working for a county government at the moment. I see a lot of difficulties, because so many groups:

1. Residents
2. Merchants
3. Government Agencies
4. Government Polices and Regulations
5. Developers and Investors
6. Financiers
7. elected County Councilmembers
8. the elected County Executive

have to be on the same page for anything to happen. Plus, "government agencies" aren't monolithic. Certain agencies may be supportive, others may not. And certain agencies (especially the budget office) have more suasion than others. All the operating agencies end up subservient to the County Executive in terms of policy.

Plus, you need money. And there has to be plenty of money to make it work. At least in a timely fashion.

In DC, TIF or "tax increment financing" based on anticipated future increases in tax revenues against which you can sell bonds to get upfront investment monies, is used all the time--maybe even too much. Plus there are so many property tax abatements (which also can be monetized) given out (without adequate evaluation) that the process deserves as much scrutiny as has been given recently to "earmarks."

In Maryland, apparently TIF has been used only about one dozen times across the entire state, according to this article, "Beechtree development touches off multimillion-dollar debate," from the Baltimore Sun about a proposed-TIF project in Harford County, a project that is getting heat from various sectors on ideological and other grounds. According to the article:

Though TIF has been in use for several decades across the country, Betnun said, it has only been used about 10 times in Maryland - to fund the public infrastructure for Arundel Mills mall, National Business Park near Fort Meade and National Harbor in Prince George's County, among other developments.

This makes it difficult to raise the necessary monies upfront to deal with issues in an accelerated fashion in "Priority Funding Areas."

It happens I've recommended TIF-based funding for a community plan-based project that I am tangentially involved in because parts of their community plan touch on the pedestrian and bicycle access planning process that I am managing. I'm not sure that there are even 3 other examples of the County ever doing such a thing.

(Plus, I recommend a TIF district or "transit value capture district" to be created to fund key transit extensions and route changes that I am hoping can get into the Master Plan. I have my fingers crossed. More, maybe, on that later, if it gets anywhere.)