Rare example of a corporate return to the city: Sherwin-Williams and Cleveland

So reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "The return of Sherwin-Williams’ workers may revive downtown Cleveland — but not without resistance."

Companies did move back to the city.  While there was a trend of corporations that had moved to the suburbs moving back to the city--examples like Compuware and Rocket Mortgage in Detroit, and Panasonic to Newark, it wasn't universal.

I had hoped DC had a shot with this, and companies like AES, Nestle, and Hilton, but it wasn't to be.  

Remember, MCI was based in DC for a long time, mostly because of accessibility to its regulator, the FCC, and all the cases it brought to open long distance telecommunications to competition.

-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?" (2015)
-- "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"" (2017)

And corporations left legacy cities for the South.  Plenty of corporations moved out of legacy regions altogether to the South, especially Atlanta and Texas ("Next Phase of Clustering of Business away from the Midwest"). 

For example, while Panasonic was moving to Newark ("A lesson that seeing is believing: Panasonic's new building in Newark, NJ as an example, positive and negative, in businesses coming back to the city center"), Mercedes-Benz moved their headquarters from New Jersey to Atlanta, leveraging the naming rights they've paid for the Atlanta Falcons football team.

Companies continue to leave smaller cities.  Like Caterpillar from Peoria to the Chicago suburbs and then to Texas ("Caterpillar to move headquarters to Texas, marking second major corporate departure from Illinois in 6 weeks," Chicago Tribune), and Winston-Salem ("Smaller cities lose out when it comes to business consolidation and headquarters relocation: WInston-Salem, North Carolina").  

A big concern is airport access and size, needing convenient connections to multiple places from a close by airport.  Plus, as manufacturing shifts South, eventually, so do companies 

Car versus transit accessibility.  Or companies choosing locations for branches, like State Farm in Dallas and Atlanta, they chose based on freeway access, unlike the quest by Amazon HQ2 made transit accessibility a major criterion ("Amazon's HQ2 Hunt Is a Transit Reckoning," Bloomberg) .

CEOs move to get away from progressive taxation and politics.  And corporations like those owned by Ken Griffin ("Ken Griffin poised to pay extra $1.4M in taxes for NYC properties thanks to Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax: report," New York Post) and Starbucks ("Is Starbucks breaking up with Seattle?," Seattle Times) continue the trend of companies moving out of cities where they believe the regulatory environment is unfavorable.  

Griffin doesn't want to pay extra tax on his $238 million condo in NYC, after leaving Chicago because of its crime ("Billionaire Ken Griffin says Citadel’s Chicago exodus was ‘not hard,’ cites crime, taxes," Fox").  Starbucks isn't happy with Seattle City Council's passage of an employment tax.

Corporate consolidation.  There is still the issue of corporate consolidation cutting businesses, like banks and railroads.

And aging buildings.  A counter-force to in city location is aging building stock.  As buildings age companies don't want to pay the high renovation cost, so they move to new facilities, often in the suburbs where the company can spread out, on a campus ("Dallas Is Booming—Except for Its Downtown," Wall Street Journal).  From the article:

This city is a hotbed for commercial property. The metro area’s population is booming and financial-services firms are flocking here, earning the area the sobriquet “Y’all Street.” Yet at its heart is one of the country’s worst-hit central business districts: Downtown Dallas.

Companies are abandoning this neighborhood and its aging office towers. They are heading to the Uptown district or the thriving suburbs, often over concerns about crime and homelessness. Left behind are defaulted loans, foreclosures and deeply discounted property sales.

Plus new buildings generally are outfitted with the kinds of amenities that younger employees seek ("10 Must-Have Commercial Building Amenities That Attract (and Keep) Top Tenants," Fooda).

Cleveland.  Has a new corporate headquarters with a worker mandate to work in the office every day.  The addition is a boon after the recent closure of the Downtown Heinen's Supermarket (" Farmers market replaces Heinen’s in Cleveland," Supermarket News).  But it comes with costs.

... Sherwin-Williams has opened its new roughly 1-million-square-foot headquarters near Public Square, requiring office employees to show up in person five days a week.

For the city, that is welcome news. The deal was written to protect jobs and taxes. And the return of so many workers has become something bigger: the spark city officials and business leaders hope will finally bring a pandemic-battered downtown back to life.

For many of those workers, however, it feels like a loss. The return-to-office mandate ended a hybrid arrangement many had built their lives around. They arranged child care, bought homes and reshaped their daily routines around working remotely — and now that flexibility is gone.

The result is a 36-story tower standing at the intersection of three competing interests: a company’s push for in-person collaboration, a city’s fight to bring downtown back to life and a workforce that had reorganized life around working from home.

In any case, in recent times, it's a win for legacy cities, and "the Rust Belt."

Where should cities focus their economic development resources?  However, some economists make the point that cities do better when building up and developing smaller businesses, than focusing on large corporations who may stay just a short time ("How U.S. Cities Lost the Economic Development Plot," CommonEdge).  I call this the difference between "building a local economy" and traditional "Economic Development."

I suppose I come down in the middle.  Some companies seem to be worth recruiting, like Amazon HQ2, although post covid it hasn't worked out as well.  High paying jobs, reasonable amounts of subsidy, secondary development, e.g., with Amazon HQ2, that's seeded a Virginia Tech campus.

But as pointed out in the aftermath of the closure of the Pfizer research lab in Ann Arbor, and the number of companies that developed out of it, that many small companies rather than one big one reduces risk for the local economy ("How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector").

Doubles and triples, especially in a stage of the US economy that is focused on smaller companies, rather than the big corporations of past decades.  E.g., big GE is now three smaller companies with others sold off.  Same with Honeywell.  Large corporations of the old days are smaller or non existent today.

Goldman Sachs is building a new campus for more than 5,000 employees in Dallas, its largest in the U.S. outside New York City. (Shelby Tauber/For The Washington Post)

This trend is furthered by how new technologies such as electrification of automobiles or AI make it easier for new entrants and harder for legacy companies ("Factors undergirding the decline of economic clusters").  

NYC under Mayor Bloomberg made a good move in funding the start of a new "technology and engineering higher education institution"--Cornell Tech--as a way for the city to stay relevant economically in the face of shrinkage of the financial industry among others ("Bankers are leaving Wall Street for ‘Y’all Street’," Washington Post).

A great newspaper article about St. Paul Minnesota's options for revenue generation | How about Packaging, Marketing, and Branding them into a Program?

 -- "How might St. Paul boost its tax base and stabilize property taxes?" in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press

One of the ideas is what's called a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, by nonprofits. This is done by cities to help to cover the cost of services to nonprofits not paying property taxes.  It's a voluntary program and most places feel they aren't getting enough--which is probably true.  

Boston's probably the best example.  To get around an unwillingness to agree, Providence proposed a "capitation tax" per college student, since so much of the city's property is owned by Brown University.

Interestingly, there was an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "O’Connor’s partnership approach brings millions to Pittsburgh from tax-exempt nonprofits, corporations," about PILOTs which has been a big issue there because the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Allegheny Health System, the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie-Mellon University control so much of the property.

Rather than focusing on negotiating a broader PILOT, which could include funding for annual operations, he has moved to getting various institutions committed to putting money towards capital projects.  For example, UPMC is paying for new ambulances--some of the trips the new ambulances make will end up at one of their facilities.  The Heinz Foundation, a strong supporter of the city and region, gave money to the city to finish its stalled new Comprehensive Land Use Plan.  Etc.

Map of St. Paul from Etsy.

In St. Paul, it turns out almost 60% of the nonprofit land is government owned, where no PILOT would be derived.  And the rest of the organizations are generally much smaller than those in Pittsburgh.

Making it harder, St. Paul is small, about 315,000 population, while the rest of Ramsey County is only 226,000 more.  Plus, the county has lost population since 2020.

Building the tax base through capital investment.  The article goes on to describe various options.  Some are what I call investment oriented, in that "you need to spend (invest) money to make money."

One of the items discussed is Tax Increment Financing, where you sell bonds to support development based on the idea that the new development will raise tax revenues.  So you get the loan against future benefits, which pay off the bond.

According to the article, a number of groups oppose more TIF, even though the city has the capacity for more, because they see it disproportionately benefiting developers, which I suppose it does.

Neighborhood TIF, Minneapolis.  But I couldn't help but think of the counter example of Minneapolis, which created a TIF system to fund neighborhood improvements.  Called the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, resident associations worked with the city, school district and parks district to make physical improvements with long term positive effects (case study, "Empowered Participation in Urban Governance: The Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research).

Perhaps St. Paul could look at multiple approaches to TIF, neighborhoods as well as more traditional development projects.

Some MPAS4 projects.

Metropolitan Area Projects, Oklahoma City.  Another program, although more in terms of packing, is the MAPS program in Oklahoma City.  

It's an add on sales tax, which in different phases each with a preapproved capital projects plan, has funding major projects, from a sports arena, to a streetcar, to canal and river improvements, and physical improvements to schools ("Big League Cities: Small Cities," "Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape"). 

From the Daily Oklahoman article, "What MAPS projects will start in 2024? Everything to know about ongoing OKC projects":

For three decades, Oklahoma City’s Metropolitan Area Projects program, better known as MAPS, has played a key role in ongoing development of the city.

The debt-free MAPS program is funded by a one-cent sales tax, approved by voters and currently expected to raise more than $1 billion between 2020 and 2028. The funds are used for capital projects, neighborhood improvements and job-creating initiatives.

Various projects for MAPS 4, the program’s current iteration, are underway, with all of them in different stages of development. Passed by voters in 2019, MAPS 4 encompasses 16 projects that address issues like homelessness, post-incarceration programming, youth and senior well-being, along with traditional MAPS projects like the fairgrounds coliseum and updates to the NBA Thunder's arena.

Note that the current MAPS4 program is less focused on big capital projects, and includes a number of social service facilities, transit development, and  "beautification" projects, as well as providing operating funding for some programs  ("Some OKC MAPS 4 programs will receive annual operating funds. Here's how that will work," Daily Oklahoman).  Operating funds will be provided long term, through a creation of a trust funded by MAPS. (Although I think that many of the funding commitments should instead be paid through a larger property tax.)

MAPS might not work that well for St. Paul as it's small, whereas OKC is as large physically, as many US counties.  A city exclusive tax wouldn't generate enough money.  But could the city and county develop a similar program, jointly?

Hennepin County Community Works.  The county next door to St. Paul (which is in Ramsey) is the home to Minneapolis.  In the 1990s Hennepin County realized that population leakage from Minneapolis as a result of suburban outmigration would also hurt its revenue stream.  

It studied the areas of the city that best retained their value, and found them proximate to lakes, parks, rivers, and trails.  So it created a program to make investments in the city to extend those qualities of livability to more places, both to retain population and to gain it.

This journal article, "A COUNTY AND ITS CITIES: THE IMPACT OF HENNEPIN COMMUNITY WORKS," Journal of Urban Affairs (2006), describes the program.   

Faced in the nineties with a growing imbalance between the declining prosperity of its core city (Minneapolis) and suburban municipalities, Hennepin County, Minnesota, pioneered a different path. In 1994, Hennepin County launched an urban redevelopment program, “Hennepin Community Works” (hereafter HCW) that clearly supplemented the more common models of county activity. HCW devised an entirely new redevelopment role for the county, and has consequently had a major impact on Minneapolis and its suburbs. 

Since its inception, Hennepin County commissioners have committed close to $200 million of infrastructure spending into a targeted redevelopment program with five goals: (1) to enhance the tax base; (2) to reshape troubled neighborhoods; (3) to improve transportation within the county; (4) to protect and develop green space; and (5) to create new jobs. While much of the U.S. urban past since the eighties has featured decreasing levels of public sector funding and involvement with urban affairs, Hennepin County voluntarily took on substantial additional financial and political commitments with this program

... HCW began here in 1994 as a public works program initially intended to address declining property values. Since then, HCW has significantly transformed portions of the county through major housing, transportation, parks, and environmental restoration investments. Through 2008, HCW launched nineteen projects, totaling $197.5 million in investments.

Later they added creating a light rail transit system as part of their overall investment program.

The city's peak population was 522,000 in 1950.  From 1980 to 1990 it was about 370,000.  It grew to 382,000 in 2000 and today is 435,000.  They have a ways to go to equal their peak but at the same time Hennepin County's population in 1950 was only about 150,000 people outside of Minneapolis.  Today the non-city population is almost 850,000 people.

Allegheny County Regional Asset District.  The Regional Asset District in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania is funded from a county-wide sales and use tax ("How the Regional Asset District rode to the rescue of Allegheny County attractions," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Historically, the City of Pittsburgh paid for and provided regionally-serving cultural assets (museums, zoo, etc.) without support from other area jurisdictions.  As cities lost population and business activity, funding such facilities became an increasing strain.  The RAD, also supporting cultural assets in the County, was a way to spread out the cost.

Business Revitalization District Zoning Overlay, Cleveland.  This calls for an extra level of review, including design, in designated zones where the city has already been investing, to ensure that each new project adds value to the whole, rather than diminishing it.  The classification has been subsumed into a broader category of design review.

"Outlines of a plan."  To me, St. Paul has had a relatively high turnover of mayors.  So some programs that have been introduced, like "Vibrant Places and Spaces":

• Ensure Saint Paul puts people first
• Encourage vitality through investment, private and public alike
• Create accessible places where people want to connect and spend time
• Promote healthy living
• Celebrate the city’s cultural diversity

get dropped when a new administration takes office.  

Plus, while I am contradicting the conclusion in the entry about Pittsburgh and the NFL Draft Day Event and many small projects versus one or two large ones ("Big events as priming actions: Pittsburgh and the NFL Draft | Go big, medium, or little? Go for a few projects or many?"), the placemaking focus on the Vibrant Places initiative improved places on the margins, but didn't contribute to a larger whole.

St. Paul has focused on leveraging the light rail, greening initiatives, and projects converting large vacant industrial properties ("Why hasn't light rail revitalized the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul | While it has for the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis").  And a soccer stadium ("Sports facilities and the reproduction of retail space often doesn't work for the locals").

St. Paul also has the Grand Round, a parkway system conceived of before Olmsted.  It's connective capacity ought to be leveraged in the same way Hennepin County focused on rivers, lakes, parks, and trails in Minneapolis as a way to stabilize neighborhoods and add population.

Conclusion.  These programs show various ways St. Paul could work with Ramsey County to develop a long term investment approach for the city and county based on creating a package of programs and funding sources.   

Revisiting St. Louis City and County: The idea of a merger | Renewing the Gateway to the West

Could a consolidated City and County of St. Louis be the next urban success story?

This has been suggested by the new County Executive, Sam Page ("St. Louis County executive floats city rejoining county amid budget crisis," St. Louis Business Journal).  From the article:

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page is expected Thursday to call for St. Louis to consider reentering St. Louis County as a municipality, framing the idea as part of a broader push to consolidate services and respond to mounting budget pressures in both jurisdictions.

In prepared remarks for a press event Thursday, Page said county budget cuts and rising costs have forced service reductions and opened a need for a larger public discussion about how the city and county can sustain core services without new taxes.

“Faced with the Council’s budget cuts and forced to reduce services, one path forward is to find more ways to consolidate key city and county services,” Page's prepared remarks said. “The city could even re-enter the county as a municipality.” Page said the idea has “a lot of political support,” though he also described it as a proposal meant to spur public feedback rather than an immediate policy push.

Sadly this historic building--yes, seriously damaged but repairable--near Downtown St. Louis was demolished instead of preserved. 

“These are big ideas. They won’t happen this year. They will not happen while I am county executive,” he said. “But let’s look at the challenges the county and city are facing and tackle them together.”

Like Baltimore, the City and County are separate jurisdictions, and the City is not counted as part of the County.  

Like Baltimore, St. Louis is a once industrial and financial center that continues to shrink, with a population of about 280,000.  In 1950 the population was almost 3x, 860,000.  

It was the 8th largest city in America, without the County as part of its population.  The County had about 406,000 residents.  So today

Outmigration has been great for the suburbs ("The 16 Best Suburbs in St. Louis, MO," Gateway Realty Group), while St. Louis is  --and Gateway Realty Group is based in the suburbs, and "appropriates" the "Gateway to the West" tagline not to promote the city, but the suburbs.

Anheuser-Busch when it was very successful.  The decline in sales of mass produced beer has led the company to close three production facilities.  But not in St. Louis ("Brewery Closures Hit Anheuser-Busch Facilities In Three States," CRE Daily).

Broken by business mergers shifting headquarters to other states and countries.  St. Louis has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs because business consolidation.  

Once a major rail town, railroads in other cities became much bigger and St. Louis was relegated to a secondary position.  It was once one of the largest stockyards--meat producers--in the US.  No more.

May Company Department Stores became Macy's, newly headquartered in NYC.  Boatman's Bank became part of Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte.  Anheuser-Busch still produces beer, but is now a subsidiary of a company in Europe. 

Not only did those companies leave, the ancillary jobs that served those firm like supply and logistics, advertising production, etc., left also.  These days, St. Louis no longer has a vibrant Downtown, although it remains attractive with an array of historic buildings.

Assets.  The city has assets: Washington University at St. Louis and St. Louis University as a couple of anchors.  It lost its pro football and basketball teams long ago, but still has baseball and hockey.  The Ballpark Village development around the baseball stadium is a national best practice example of "sports and entertainment districts" alongside stadiums/arenas.  Plus there is the Gateway Arch National Park, the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers--still a source of barge freight traffic, an acceptable but needs to grow light rail transit system, etc.

The opportunity for repositioning and a reenergized revitalization program.  The County's population is just under 1 million.  

Together they would be about 1.3 million in population, fighting with Dallas to be the 9th or 10th largest city in the US.  It would move up from 82nd.  And would allow for a big repositioning.  (Note that the combined population today is barely more than the population in 1950.)

"St. Louis was near the site of the 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition launch, and the city later served as a gathering place for pioneers collecting supplies for trips to the American West, earning the city the nickname 'Gateway to the West.'"

A few years ago, a similar merger effort failed.  It's complicated, would require votes by the city and county and probably the State Legislature.  But it would make "the City of St. Louis" larger, with the ability for a new position beyond shrinkage.

I wrote two entries outlining what I saw as an ideal revitalization plan.

-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations"
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers"

I ranked city/county consolidation as number one.  While Indianapolis and Jacksonville are also combined city-counties, and have leveraged this to great success--Indianapolis has an advantage of having some large corporations still like Eli Lilly and is the state capital, a combined St. Louis would be larger than both.

It might not be enough to turn the city's trajectory but it's a start.  By consolidating services it should save some monies, and allow for a higher amount of bonding authority.

I would introduce consolidation along with the vision of OKC's Metropolitan Area Projects program: Oklahoma City.  MAPS comprises the large infrastructure projects that have helped redefine Oklahoma City as a major city on the western side of the Midwest.  

Fans watch an entertainer at Scissortail Park before Game 2 of the NBA basketball playoff series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the New Orleans Pelicans at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Photo: Bryan Terry/Daily Oklahoman.  

Over four tranches, plus two similar projects for the basketball team/arena that technically were separate from MAPS, projects include a streetcar, a pro basketball arena that landed the now Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team, which won last year's championship ("Big League City: Smaller Cities"), a water course on Oklahoma River that is internationally known, physical investments in schools (they needed to invest in programming too...), and a new community with a revitalized canal called Bricktown, among others.

Bricktown Canal.  Wikipedia photo by Kerwin Moore.

It's funded by an add on sales tax.  And the model of big deal infrastructure projects has also been used to fund major streetscape projects throughout Downtown ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape").  

The process is discussed in the book Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsized Cities, and referenced in Big League City: Oklahoma City's Rise to the NBA, the story about landing the Thunder basketball team..

OKC is only the 20th largest city in the US, but it is fortunate to be a major city, secondary to Houston, in the oil and natural gas biz.

Conclusion.  A St. Louis MAPS program + Consolidation would be killer. 

The St. Louis brand once was strong, as indicated by the branded "City of St. Louis" streamliner passenger railroad train of the Wabash Railroad, which before multiple mergers, was based in St. Louis.

And at least political and business leaders in St. Louis have the vision and guts to bring up consolidation.  It's not really discussed much in Baltimore or Pittsburgh, two places that need that additional oomph from being larger.  Although compared to Baltimore, Pittsburgh is on a better trajectory ("Big Ideas for a Better Pittsburgh | and a point about world class cities").  

San Francisco is not Santa Clara: How Santa Clara/San Jose are poorly represented by Super Bowl programming, even though it's home to the event

Yes, we're familiar with how many professional teams labeled after "their city" are no longer based in the city, but in the suburbs, e.g., the New York Giants and New York Jets play in New Jersey, the Arizona Cardinals play in Glendale, not Phoenix, and the San Francisco Giants moved from the city to the suburbs of San Jose in return for lots of subsidy--$80 million directly and hundreds of millions in bonds ("7 Things to Know About the Complicated Relationship Between Santa Clara and the 49ers," KQED/NPR).

Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara has the game but most of the sanctioned events leading up to it are in San Francisco. Kirby Lee/Imagn Images/Reuters

This is a problem when it comes to "economic benefits of the Super Bowl to the local economy," when the NFL will hold activities in "the big city"--New York City not suburban New Jersey, Phoenix not Glendale, and in the case of Sunday's Super Bowl, LV, in San Francisco not Santa Clara or San Jose ("Big game, big bill: Santa Clara mayor flags Super Bowl costs to the city," NBC, "Congrats, Your City Gets to Host the Super Bowl. The Party’s 40 Miles Away," Wall Street Journal, "Super Bowl LX week will once again be centered in San Francisco, but San Jose will kick off the fanfare," San Jose Mercury News).

From the WSJ:

San Jose got one sanctioned event—Super Bowl Opening Night. Mayor Matt Mahan opted to not get mad, but get even. He helped raise $5 million from businesses to field a competing roster of events, including a three-day block party called Super Fest, watch parties, drone shows and sold-out outdoor performances by the R&B singer Kehlani and DJ Dom Dolla.

I doubt the San Jose programs, scheduled against NFL sanctioned events held elsewhere, will have a significant effect in drawing fans to San Jose, especially if people are staying in hotels in SF.

The last Super Bowl in Santa Clara, in 2026, earned the city less than $1 million.  From "‘We’ll be on the center stage’: San Jose pulls out all the stops for 2026 sports bonanza," Local News Matters:

When Levi’s Stadium hosted Super Bowl 50 in 2016, reports found the Bay Area saw a $240 million boost to the local economy — San Jose, however, only saw 12% of those economic benefits, while 57% went to San Francisco. Santa Clara, where the stadium is located, only saw 7% of the benefits.

It's rare for a sports economic impact study to be so fine-grained.  They also subtracted out negative effects, and separately accounted for in kind project donations to area nonprofits.

Usually, small businesses don't benefit much from these events, as most of the money patrons spend is on travel, lodging, car rental, and food and beverage, and many of these firms are not locally owned.  From "Super Bowl LX preps spotlight local sourcing as NFL targets $360M economic impact," Silicon Valley Business Journal.

The NFL is also trying to keep the economic impact local, according to the NFL's Vice President of Global Events, Nicki Ewell. She said the league used a local-first sourcing strategy, sourcing from regional restaurants, vendors and local labor for stadium build-out and events so spending stays in the Bay Area.

Previous Silicon Valley Business Journal reporting shows that Super Bowl LX is projected to bring 90,000 people to the Bay Area in addition to a projected $360 million to $630 million in economic impact.

"This is huge," said Jayne Ancheta, owner of Santa Clara-based Macaron De Jayne and Source LX participant. "I secured multiple contracts for the Super Bowl events, and I had catering opportunities outside of the Super Bowl." The Super Bowl also marks an opportunity to spotlight the Bay Area, Ewell noted.

Note the same kinds of issues are present with "All Star Games" in baseball and basketball, etc.

-- "Musing on the economic impact of cultural and sports events," 2019
-- "Not enough time for a 2024 DC-Baltimore Olympic Bid (to make sense)," 2014
-- "Big sporting events (World Cup/Olympics), economic development and trickle down economics," 2014
-- "Super Bowl," 2016
-- "More need for economic revitalization planning/linkage with sports stadiums: Las Vegas (+ Houston and the Super Bowl)," 2017
-- "Minneapolis Super Bowl: Urban Revitalization and Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2018

-- "NBA All Star Game in Salt Lake, economic development hype | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pirates baseball team economics," 2023

The Urban Land Institute disagrees ("Inglewood’s Transformation: How an NFL Stadium Brought the City Back from the Brink of Bankruptcy").  But not the Washington Post ("A home Super Bowl is good for the Rams. But is SoFi Stadium good for Inglewood?").

Special labor.  One point of difference that I failed to account for in the past in terms of economic impact is what we might call "special events labor"--the people who run lights, sound, etc. for the event.  There definitely is an impact here, where people might get paid for a couple week long temporary gig associated with the Super Bowl.

NFL Draft economic impact.  More recently, the NFL has made an event out of the Draft, which is now held each year in different cities across the country. Economic impact is claimed to be as much as one half of the economic impact of a Super Bowl, which seems outlandish to me ("NFL Draft Expected to Have Huge Economic Impact for Detroit," Corp!), but apparently many tens of thousands of people are attending. 

"NFL Draft: Fans flock to second day of NFL Draft as Detroit nears attendance record," CNN.

In 2024, it was estimated that 300,000 fans would come to Detroit for the Draft, more than double a typical Super Bowl.  

It makes no sense that these projections are accurate.  But this photograph from Detroit's Draft Days tells another story.

-- Economic Impact of the NFL Draft Event in Detroit, Andersen Economic Group.  AEG differentiates between direct and indirect impact, indirect has to do with the multiplier effect of money recirculating within the economy.  WRT sports event, indirect impact is somewhat reduced because some of the major beneficiaries are firms located elsewhere (like airlines, hotels, rental cars) and the money repatriates to those headquarter facilities.

I like this infographic on the economic impact, produced by the City of Detroit by Octane Design, in the Sports Travel Magazine article, "2024 NFL Draft Brings Detroit $213.6 Million in Estimated Economic Impact," Sports Travel Magazine.  

Community revitalization initiatives for smaller communities | marginal attraction of people and commerce even in small amounts makes a difference

Sometimes I'm quick to judge revitalization initiatives as not particularly wide ranging.  But the fact of the matter is that many commercial districts can benefit positively from marginal increases in demand, visitorship and spending even from small projects.

For example Fargo North Dakota has doubled its downtown population over the past 25 years ("St. Cloud aims to revitalize downtown by ‘copying what Fargo did’," Minneapolis Star-Tribune) and Winona, Minnesota, by refocusing its use of its riverfront, has created an arts district ("How an industrial city along the Mississippi River transformed itself into an arts town," MST)

1.  "Glenview buying former Signode campus to control redevelopment," Crain's Chicago Business.  I've often made the point that an RFP isn't a plan, that it is a solicitation for proposals from organizations which may or may not have good ideas.  

Starting with a plan is better than an RFP, it shapes the proposals and what is acceptable, based on an already developed community consensus.

Glenview takes this a step further--maybe a plan would have been enough?--and bought a large vacant industrial property, totaling 56-acres, to be able to shape how it is developed.

Similarly, Monroeville, Pennsylvania considered buying the local failed shopping mall.  Instead, Walmart bought it and is likely to build a retail facility there.

en Sjaaheim, Silas Dingman and Brady Skahen, members of the pop-punk band F-18, perform at B-Side Indie Music Cafe in downtown St. Cloud last month. The performance was part of a night of punk music put on through Project 37, an all-ages and sober music program. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

2.  "This central Minnesota city is taking a true punk-rock approach to revive its downtown," Minneapolis Star-Tribune.  It probably won't spur the creation of the next Prince, or the ground up punk rock movement in DC in the 1970s sparked by the teen band, which morphed into Fugazi, but if cities like Austin, Chicago and Seattle have developed programs to support their music industry and the presentation of like music, why not St. Cloud?  From the article:

For years, officials here have been trying to enliven a lackluster downtown beset with empty storefronts, hollowed-out offices and nearly empty sidewalks.

Now some punk rockers are striking a chord. They, along with other musicians and artists, are stepping up in ways beyond what officials have done, adding cultural attractions and events. A new all-ages music venue that opened this past summer — the B-Side Indie Music Cafe — has already established itself as a gathering spot, jumping with punk rock kids one night, with singer-songwriters another.

In the works next door is a community arts space run by the Wirth Center for the Performing Arts. And in the future? Leaders dream of an arts magnet school or art museum.

“I have a three-part plan to revitalize downtown into an arts district,” said James Newman, executive director of the Wirth Center, which has provided music lessons in central Minnesota for more than four decades. “Downtown has so much potential, and I think an arts focus would be a great thing to bring people in.”

... Already sprinkled throughout downtown St. Cloud are several arts spots, including the Paramount Center for the Arts — which hosts musicals, plays and concerts, as well as art classes — and Pioneer Place on Fifth, which offers music and local radio theater. There are also stages at the Red Carpet Nightclub and an intimate venue at Gnarly Bard Theater, which opened last year.

The question is how much of this ends up being focused on people in-market, shifting their interests from something else to music, versus could St. Cloud, 65 miles from Minneapolis, develop as a destination on music?   From the article:

The planned hub is part of a trend playing out across the state as cities work to revamp downtowns with arts and experiences as retail stores struggle to stay open and offices shutter as more employees work from home.

In Winona, leaders have turned the southeastern river city into an arts destination with a concert hall and art gallery expected to open in the next year, as well as prominent festivals celebrating Shakespeare and Beethoven. In Detroit Lakes, an installation of giant wooden trolls brings people to its downtown and then sends them on an adventure to nearby parks and trails. And in Anoka, folks are invited to explore its downtown’s concerts, farmers markets and businesses with a drink in hand as part of the state’s first social district.

It's a reverse of the more typical flow of rural-suburban residents to the city to join a music ecosystem.

-- "Arts as production: The rock music ecosystem in West Seattle," 2022
-- "Ground up (guerrilla) art #2: community halls and music (among other things)," 2011
-- "Under threat: Austin's music industry as an element of the city's cultural ecosystem and economy," 2016 
-- "Leveraging music for cultural and economic development: part one, opera," 2017
-- "Leveraging music as cultural heritage for economic development: part two, popular music," 2017
-- "NBC4 asks if DC can become a concert capital like Nashville, Austin, and New Orleans?," 2019
-- ""Arts district planning" in Arlington County | Many communities don't know the difference between arts as production and arts as consumption," 2021 
-- "Another example of why local culture plans need to include an element on retail/dealing with for profit elements of the cultural ecosystem: Nashville's Tubb Record Shop," 2022

Baek Jae-ho, head coach of the Sangdong High School baseball team.Photographer: SeongJoon Cho for Bloomberg

3.  "High School Baseball Brought a Dying Korean Town Back to Life," Bloomberg.  The rural declining mining town of Sangdong came up with a program to attract new residents, by creating a first-in-class high school baseball program.  From the article:

That passion for the game inspired Cho Yun-hee and Kim Kyung-soo, 1986 graduates of Sangdong High. As part of a group discussing the future of their alma mater, they spearheaded an effort to attract students, mulling and rejecting proposals such as creating a training program for the energy and mining industries. Then in 2022, they hit upon an ambitious plan. The school would offer free baseball training, plus lodging and food for out-of-area students.

But with an estimated cost of 500 million won ($350,000) a year, the proposal wasn’t an easy sell. Opponents viewed the expense as ludicrous for a decaying community, and even supporters questioned whether a ghost town like Sangdong could lure transplants from dynamic parts of the country.

... Baek had his reputation and a straightforward pitch to prospective students: Get top-level training and a chance at the pro leagues for free. That’s a strong combination in a country where team membership fees and private coaching can cost more than 3 million won a month. The school provides equipment, free lunches and helps pay for other meals. There are now 38 students in the program, two short of a full roster after two players were expelled for smoking (the school has a strict one-strike-and-out policy).

Since the program started, population has inched up over 1,000, new businesses are opening and new housing is being constructed.

The long-vacant Palace Theater in downtown Gary. A blueprint for reversing the city’s fortunes proposes using the restored theater as the heart of a new arts district. Photographer: Zach Mortice/Bloomberg CityLab

4.  Smaller but better?  "Can Anyone Save Gary, Indiana?," Bloomberg.  Gary is about 30 miles from Chicago, and has transit service to and from the South Shore Line, the last US interurban commuter railroad service.

Gary was a steel town.  As US Steel faltered but also reduced employment through capital investment, so did the city--US Steel once had 30,000 employees, now 4,000 (remember too the job multiplier effect which is between 3x and 4x, so that's potentially a loss of 104,000 jobs total.  The city has over 7,000 abandoned buildings.

From the article:

The city’s population also peaked in the ’60s, at about 170,000; today fewer than 70,000 live there. Roughly 80% of Gary residents are Black and a third live below the poverty line — about three times the state average.

Especially downtown, the impact of the exodus is shocking. Most of the land within a several-block radius of City Hall — 5th and Broadway, the center of town — is a bleak patchwork of cleared lots and abandoned commercial buildings. It’s the kind of decay only seen when there was once a rapid and focused public investment in infrastructure, followed by immediate wholesale neglect.

But according to a new study by Notre Dame’s Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative, the failure of mega-scaled landmark buildings like the Genesis Center — a typical gambit for struggling cities — isn’t just an indicator of flailing industrial economies. Instead, the size and form of these developments are themselves the primary culprits.

“When you’re in a state of physical collapse, it doesn’t make any sense to build one big building, because what you need to do is take whatever demand exists and spread it out in smaller buildings, so you can actually find a way to illustrate to people that this change has come,” says Stefanos Polyzoides, dean of Notre Dame’s architecture school, which houses the Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative. “One building accommodating a change is not urbanism. It’s architecture.”

This is an excellent point about many small projects having more impact than a single large project.  So Gary is working to engage multiple small developers, and focusing on rebuilding the public realm in the core of the city, and focusing development on the commercial core, and in neighborhoods that are somewhat stabilized but have vacant lots perfect for infill buildings, zoning changes and some money from the state, which seriously restricted the city's ability to generate property tax revenues through various legislative initiatives.  From the article:

But if the city is going to depend on small business owners for its downtown renaissance, there are resources it needs to offer, he says, like business management training. “A lot of times, mom-and-pop business owners jump in the water and learn how to swim while we’re in the water,” he says. “If we’d had avenues for training, then a lot of businesses that had not made it might be able to make it.”

Jane Jacobs was not in favor of large projects at the expense of smaller, which is discussed in the book Cities: Back from the Edge. 

Elkhart still has a thriving downtown.

5.  Elkhart, Indiana.  The Notre Dame program is also working with Elkhart, and the article contrasts revitalization there versus Gary.  

Elkhart has had more success because of a strong philanthropic community, a lesser problem in terms of abandoned buildings, better capitalized locally-based businesses, and a stronger industrial base, centered on RV manufacturing.  From the article:

Working with other family-owned businesses, as well as the public sector and philanthropic support, Weaver has seen $250 million invested over the last six years in Elkhart’s River District, a mixed-use live-work neighborhood at the confluence of the Elkhart and St. Joseph Rivers. 

So far, the effort has produced hundreds of new residents, a 1.5-mile riverwalk, five parks, and 40 new businesses; a new and lively urban place. “The only way I’ve seen this successfully executed is to slowly build confidence by incremental development,” Weaver says. “I think what Notre Dame has set up is a playbook for communities to think about redevelopment in a way that’s hyperlocal to them.”

Notably, the equity invested is from the community itself, he says. “Nobody is coming to save Elkhart,” says Weaver.

"Hotel Elkhart Named Top Restoration Project in Indiana," HospitalityNet.

Investing in yourself, rather than seeking a savior from outside pushing a large project is key.  From the article:

In some ways, Elkhart is in a different boat than Gary: It has a strong philanthropic community and an intact industrial base.

It’s home to Patrick Industries, which is the leading manufacturer of the ever popular RVs.

Weaver’s ability to finance urban development is closely tied into this dynamic. His firm also develops industrial facilities, and Weaver says the returns for building a “a big dumb box” can be 20%. For his civic work in the River District, it’s paltry 3%.

And he’s not sure building quality urban places outside of major metropolitan areas is going to be an attractive investment for investors any time soon. “I don’t know that we’ll ever be in a situation where the best outcome for the community is the best outcome for the developer in the short term,” he says. “There’s a conflict. I think it’s very difficult to build buildings that enhance civic pride, that put the community first, and provide a short-term superior return.”

While the article discusses structural racism as an issue in Gary, which is majority black at 72% of the population, it doesn't discuss how Elkhart is 62% white.  

This gives the city an easier path forward than Gary ("Elkhart looks to spark downtown revitalization with $40M amphitheater," Inside Indiana Business, "Elkhart officials approve 2 development projects to reimagine city," WNDU TV," "Elkhart," BusinessView). 

Gary's waterfront.  Despite the decline of the steel industry generally, and the reduction in workforce at the US Steelworks in Gary by 70%+, the Gary Steelworks is still the largest steel plant in the world.

Another advantage is that while Gary has the shore of Lake Michigan as an asset, it's occupied in part by US Steel, while Elkhart is able to leverage its riverfront ("Revitalization of the Elkhart River District," Landscape Architecture). 

In a way the comparison between the cities is unfair, in that Elkhart never really crashed the way that Gary did.  According to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, most of Elkhart's downtown is historically intact, and designated.   

Elkhart County is the number-one tourist destination in the state, primarily because of the Heritage Trail, a 90-mile journey through Amish farms, shops, small towns, and urban areas. Free CDs guide visitors past Elkhart’s 1924 Elco Theatre, the Midwest Museum of American Art, and the RV Hall of Fame and Museum.

Elkhart River

 Another attraction in Elkhart is the National New York Central Railroad Museum, which highlights the importance of railroads to the city’s and the country’s development. Elkhart was a vital link between East and West during the country’s growth, and the city is a natural home for this museum, since its rail yard is among America’s largest. The museum includes a replicated stationmaster’s office and a restored 100-year-old freight house complex containing displays and hands-on exhibits.

That makes a difference.  It reminds me of Pontiac Michigan, a majority black city in a county, Oakland that is majority white.  But the County didn't realize it had an obligation to assist the city in substantive revitalization.

-- "Pontiac Michigan: a lagging African American city in one of the nation's wealthiest counties," 2022

Marginal increases in population can have an extranormal impact.  

6.  The above-mentioned downtown residential development program in Fargo, North Dakota (Downtown in Focus Action Plan, Fargo Core Neighborhoods Master Plan).

Block 6 Apartments, Campbell Properties, Fargo, North Dakota.

7.  Tulsa's Remote program to attract "work from home" tech workers by providing small relocation grants ("The economic benefits of paying workers to move," Bloomberg).

8.  Paducah's artist recruitment program, which has helped to revitalize neighborhoods near downtown, attracting artists and businesses, in part because of Paducah's Interstate highway connections to other Midwestern cities with summer art fairs where artists sell their goods ("In Paducah, Artists Create Something From Nothing," NPR). 

The Mississippi Crossings development on the Mississippi River in Champlin. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

9.  Champlin Minnesota's riverfront revitalization ("Twin Cities suburb turns forgotten Mississippi riverfront into a key attraction," MST).  The city has worked to leverage its riverfront since the late 1990s and it has taken 20+ years of steady effort to come to fruition.

(Stillwater, in the far suburbs of Minneapolis worries about overtourism, "Scenic Stillwater draws festive crowds. How much tourism is too much?," "Remade Stillwater riverfront could bring new parks, boat launch, picnic space and fishing piers," MST).

10. "A mountain-bike boom brought growing pains. But these mining towns now embrace their new identity," Crosby and Ironton, on the decline with the close of mines, shift their economies to outdoor recreation and tourism ("Iron Range to spend $5 million on mountain biking trails," MST, 2018).

James Brainard, the mayor of Carmel, Ind., poses before the last of the buildings filling up City Center.Alan Greenblatt/Governing

11.  Creating a center in suburban towns.  Not revitalization per se, but "vitalization" of otherwise residentially focused communities ("Twin Cities suburbs seek destination status with new downtown plans," "St. Louis Park’s West End bucks the trend with one of area’s lowest vacancy rates," MST).

Carmel, Indiana, a traditional suburb of Indianapolis, realized it needed to create a downtown to spur growth ("Meet the Mayor Who Totally Transformed His City," Governing Magazine, "‘How Did I End Up in Indiana?’ Welcome to the Internet’s Favorite Small City," Wall Street Journal).  From the WSJ:

“What I heard when I went door to door in May 1995 for my first election was this yearn for a traditional city,” he said.

At the time, zoning laws prevented the integration of residential and commercial development. Over the next three decades, Brainard said, Carmel has been revitalized in large part through zoning changes and tax increment financing, which allowed the city to build infrastructure with bonds backed by the projected tax revenue of future real estate. 

Carmel has built several multimillion-dollar, mixed-use developments along its central corridor with townhomes, apartments, boutique shops and restaurants. An Arts & Design district with galleries and showrooms now sits in place of the city’s original downtown area. 

It connects to the City Center development, which is home to a 151,000-square-foot concert hall and the Carmel Christkindlmarkt holiday market. These developments are connected by the Monon Greenway, which can be walked or cycled and is part of the 27-mile Monon Trail that runs to downtown Indianapolis, according to Brainard. He has also implemented a network of over 150 roundabouts as an alternative to signal lights, in an attempt to move traffic more efficiently, increase walkability and minimize car accidents.

It's been very successful, so another suburb, Fishers, is doing the same thing ("How Fishers is bringing people out of cul-de-sacs," "New 'urban village' is the latest development in Nickel Plate District south of 116th Street," Indianapolis Star), "Fishers announces plans for $122.5M in new downtown developments," Indianapolis Business Journal).

12. Rural "company" towns invest locally to attract workers.  The Wall Street Journal reports on Pella, Iowa, the home of Pella Windows ("Facing Labor Shortages, Pella Reinvents the Company Town in Rural Iowa").  

Pella Corp. has offices and manufacturing plants in more than 30 cities across the U.S. and Canada. But one of the toughest jobs, say executives at this closely held maker of windows and doors, is convincing workers to locate here in its hometown, a rural city of about 10,000 residents 45 miles southeast of Des Moines.

The company and its controlling shareholders—members of the founding Kuyper family and its descendants—set out to change that. They have spent tens of millions of dollars in the past three years on housing, child-care centers, restaurants and an indoor entertainment center, among other things, to retain and attract new workers. More spending is on the way.

“We just didn’t have the amenities that people we were trying to recruit would expect,” says Chief Executive Tim Yaggi, noting that the manufacturer competes with major cities for talent.

I think that Kohler in Wisconsin is another example.  And ironically, Andersen Windows in Wisconsin.

Somalis in Minneapolis.  

13.  Immigrants moving to languishing communities ("Immigrants as in-migrants and community revitalization") such as 

• the Somalis to Minneapolis-St. Paul ("Somalis finding their place in Minnesota," CNN)
• Latinos to Iowa ("This Iowa meatpacking town didn’t always welcome immigrants. Then the high school started a mariachi band.," Des Moines Register) and many other places ("$11M Plaza de Sol development will bring food hall, small business incubator to St. Paul’s East Side," MST)
• Portuguese and Brazilians to East Coast towns
• Haitians in Ohio don't eat cats and dogs ("An Ohio City Faces a Future Without Haitian Workers," New York Times, "Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis turned up," Guardian)
• Cape Verdeans in Boston, etc.

Threat to immigration as a revitalization augur.  This is under threat though because of the Trump Administration's anti-immigrant agenda ("The Bay Area’s ‘Little Kabul’ once welcomed Afghan refugees. Federal cuts are changing that," San Francisco Chronicle, "'Now, there is fear everywhere’: How Trump’s immigration crackdown has permeated R.I.’s smallest city, home to a big Latino population," Boston Globe, "Chicago ICE Raids Keep Customers at Home in City’s Latino Retail District," Bloomberg, "Minnesota’s Ecuadorian community is flourishing, but its future is uncertain," Sahan Journal).  From Bloomberg:

For Marco Rodriguez of Dulcelandia (Spanish for “candy land”), the raids are a double whammy. Costs for the family business he runs had already gone up by at least 25% due to tariffs, he said, and now the raids are keeping shoppers away during a peak season. Sales across his four shops in Chicago are down more than 50% this year. 

“On the corridor itself, all businesses have been affected, everyone’s feeling it,” Rodriguez said in an interview Wednesday at the chain’s shop in Little Village. “We’ve seen a drop, especially during these times, these last couple weeks, with what’s going on.”

... Fear of raids in Little Village’s two-mile retail corridor led to foot traffic falling by as much as 30% compared with the prior weekend, according to Jennifer Aguilar, who heads the local chamber of commerce. That’s exacerbating financial troubles for the 400 or so businesses in the area, she said.