Nice looking five story brick apartment building, Parks at Walter Reed development, Washington, DC

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center was a large hospital and research campus on Georgia Avenue NW in Washington, DC.

It was merged and moved into the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

The old campus went through a de-accession process and DC bought it and did a plan, calling for housing and retail mostly, with civic uses in some of the historic buildings.

I fell in with some people, too late in the process, who proposed instead of a predominately housing oriented project, a graduate medical education and biotechnology program for the site, with the aim of building back the jobs element of the campus--which when fully staffed had almost 8,000 employees.

The original hospital building is still there, but still hasn't been redeveloped.

But DC isn't particularly innovative when it comes to economic development planning.  They are comfortable with housing and retail, but not much of anything else ("Demolition Marks Turning Point for Decommissioned Hospital Site," Engineering News Record). From the Washington Business Journal article "Historic hospital building at former Walter Reed campus for sale":

The Parks at Walter Reed’s main square, anchored by a Whole Foods, other retail and apartments, is the centerpiece of the larger $700 million development, which is slated to include 2,100 housing units, 100,000 square feet of retail and 200,000 square feet of office at buildout. 

The long-term plan is for most of the historic buildings remaining on the campus to be redeveloped or preserved. But the development team has also marketed a few other properties on the campus, largely aimed at developers with niche ambitions.

Partly because the lead was somewhat of a wack job, even though a credentialed medical doctor with some affiliations with the Royal College of Surgeons Medical School in Dublin was part of the group and we were working with the nearby Washington Adventist University, which like many 7th Day Adventist colleges, has a number of health professional programs (Loma Linda University in California is a bonafide graduate medical school), we just never got anywhere.

Photo: Critical Systems.

Although later, lobbying directly with Congress, Children's Hospital Center took over the old Armed Forces Institute of Pathology there, which would have been turnkey for a medical school, and set it up to do research ("Children's National Health System Accepts Walter Reed Property").  

They're there, but I don't know how its progressing.  They call it the Innovation Campus ("NIH awards $6.7M to build additional lab space at Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus").  But it's a $6 billion project, so it's a big deal.

I ended up rewriting the concept for the St. Elizabeths campus in Southeast DC, where DC ended up building a new hospital.  

But that program ended up being a pretty ordinary hospital, not the public health innovator, graduate health education and biotechnology campus I proposed.  Again, because DC just isn't very innovative.

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part One: Rearticulating the system of health and wellness care East of the River" (2018)
-- "Part Two: Creating a graduate health and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," (2018)
-- "Part three: the potential for donations around an expanded program," (2018)

-- "The new Cedar Hill Regional Hospital opens in Southeast DC" (2025)

-- "Revisiting East of the River medical care: United Medical Center" (2018)
-- "Update on DC's plans to build a new United Medical Center" (2018)

I also suggested University of Maryland could have done it at Largo.

-- "University of Maryland could seed a complementary biotechnology and medical education initiative in Prince George's County" (2021)

And I keep revising it...

-- "Hospitals as urban anchors/revitalization levers, not usually, but with great potential to serve communities in important ways: Examples are two forthcoming projects by Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health" (2023)

Although later I realized, when writing about the conversion of the Pfizer research campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, seeding a biotechnology program is quite hard.  That facility had a lot of drugs in the pipeline which Pfizer was no longer interested in, and they willingly let new startups take them over.

-- "How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector" (2021)

Although I have to say the development is pretty impressive.  A lot is there, and nice public spaces, a super beautiful Whole Foods supermarket, and other stuff.  Lots of apartments.

Because it was designated as a historic district during the planning process, there is design review for renovation of old buildings as well as new construction.  While most buildings aren't nearly as nice and historically compatible as the one at the top of the entry, they're not terrible.  But nowhere as good as the one pictured above.

The first building is so good because it abuts a historic building.

This building has the Whole Foods on the ground floor.  It looks quite good architecturally for new construction.

The Plaza area

Whole Foods.  Because there are charter schools on the campus, the kids/youth grow up being able to experience this at lunch and after school.  It's open to all, not limited to residents of the development.  So it's a great public park amenity that the city doesn't have to pay to maintain--and couldn't at this high level of design and maintenance.

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.   

Loss of business clustering/headquarters hurts secondary cities

 1.  "Boston has lost its financial services clout. Santander’s latest move is just another example," Boston Globe.

As recently as 25 years ago, Boston punched above its weight in financial services, with powerhouse mutual fund managers at almost every corner, a top 10 retail bank in FleetBoston, even a stock exchange of our very own. Now? That supremacy feels like it has slipped away. This is just the latest example.

... With each passing year, it seems, Boston’s Financial District sheds just a little more of the sector’s clout that gave the place its name. The big post-COVID hope for the district’s future hinges on real estate conversions: hotels, dorms, apartments, tourist attractions. Anything but new offices. (And many of the offices that remain are being taken over by the likes of tech firms such as SimpliSafe, DraftKings, and Klaviyo.)

(Baltimore too had at one time been a regional financial center with national heft.  The first private equity bank was founded there.  Some big mutual funds.  Insurance companies.  No more.)

Norfolk Southern headquarters, shown here in an aerial photo on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, sits squarely in the Midtown Atlanta landscape, reflected in its gleaming glass facade. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

2.  A merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads likely means the serious diminishment of the importance of Atlanta to the new company--NS is based in Atlanta ("Atlanta is at the center of a railroad merger with big economic implications," "Coming soon to Midtown: A Union Pacific building?," Atlanta Journal-Constitution).  From the second article:

In addition to a Fortune 500 headquarters, the proposed plan would cost Atlanta jobs as operations consolidate in Nebraska, the application outlined. In total, more than half the Midtown headquarters’ management employee headcount would either relocate to Omaha or lose their jobs, the filing said.

... expects the company’s total Georgia headcount to remain at about 3,000 post-merger — versus its current 4,000.

3.  Corporate headquarters are leaving California.  Part of it is consolidation to bigger business clusters, such as Chevron from suburban San Francisco to Houston, but also conservative company owners like Elon Musk making political statements.  

Focus on new business development and growth.  The business columnist for the Orange County Register ("How can California survive the departures of big companies?") suggests the response should be to focus on the state's strength as a place for start ups and new businesses, some of which end up growing to be quite large.

4.  Another issue is the relocation of divisions from a corporate headquarters city.  For example, Starbucks, based in Seattle, has relocated its logistics division to Nashville, and appears about to sign a lease for space that could support up to 2,000 workers, far more than the size of the logistics group ("Starbucks reportedly eyes Nashville office large enough for hundreds," Seattle Times).

==========

Also see:

-- "A wrinkle on corporate headquarters: leaving the city as buildings age," 2026
-- "Clustering/agglomeration economies and revival of Southern California's space sector," 2025
-- "How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector," 2021
-- "Federal government research hub development initiative," 2023
-- "Universities and ancillary economic development (versus the anti-research agenda of the Trump Administration)," 2025
-- "Next Phase of Clustering of Business away from the Midwest," 2022
-- "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"," 2017
-- "Corporate headquarters relocating to the center city: GE chooses Boston," 2016
-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015 
-- "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," 2015
-- "Pennsylvania Avenue DC planning initiative," 2014
-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?," 2014

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").  

Taking the "George Miller" concept to Oakland, California? | Howard University looks to open a satellite campus

THe San Francisco Chronicle reports, "An elite East Coast university is in ‘stealthy’ discussions to expand into Oakland," that DC's Howard University, a premiere HBCU (Historically Black College or University) is considering a facility in Oakland, California.

A few years ago, a Temple University professor, George Miller, wrote a provocative op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer about higher education's potential to spark revitalization in Philadelphia.  One proposal was to move a far suburbs based HBCU to the city. 

-- "HBCUs and the city: Relocating Cheyney University to Philadelphia?," 2021

The second was to create a multi-college innovation center at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

 -- "The other George Miller idea: creating multi-college innovation centers in (cities) Philadelphia | Creating public library-college education centers as revitalization initiatives," 2021

For a declining city, Oakland has incredibly commercial and civic assets, even if it has lost its professional sports teams.

As Howard University looks to open a satellite campus in Oakland, California, the SF Bay's "second" city to SF, with a high percentage black population relative to the Bay area, and loss of population, businesses, and colleges ("Higher ed exposé focuses on Mills College," East Bay Express), as the economy has deindustrialized--the city was a major port and industry center--the George Miller ideas are relevant.

The thing though is to have impact, it needs to be more than a building for students to spend a semester at.  How can an HU presence be developed in a manner to have significant effect?

It's a building not a campus, "USC establishes new campus in the heart of Washington, D.C.," USC Today.  

I criticized Mayor Bowser's touting of a new USC building in DC as a major thing ("Straws and puffery: USC's DC "campus" as a lever for downtown revival").

There is a difference between a building holding a "semester in [fill in the blank] program" versus a true satellite campus and operation.  

For example, would an Oakland campus be a way for Howard's medical programs to link up with SF Bay biotech and Silicon Valley IT in a way to also feed into the DC campus?  

Under construction.

But in a manner that develops a local operation more comparable to how the University of Michigan has been developing an "innovation campus" in Detroit ("U-M Center for Innovation has long-awaited groundbreaking in Detroit," Detroit Free Press).

UM has a small building, but is building a 250,000sf facility to open in 2027 and is building a dormitory as well.  From the article:

The UMCI will be offering all-new classes and programs for U-M, McCauley said. ... it was once estimated that up to 1,000 students would be enrolled by the center's third year of operation, according to U-M Provost Laurie McCauley, that figure is no longer definite.

“We are not replicating programs that are going on in Ann Arbor," she said. "They are going to focus on interdisciplinarity and on aspects that are really new, cutting-edge programs.”

Another example is the University of Washington campus in Tacoma ("A place of promise: r three decades, UW Tacoma has sought to serve not only its students but the community as a whole," UW Magazine, "25 Things to Know as University of Washington Tacoma Turns 25," Tacoma News-Tribune). 

Originally, it too was just a building, but over the years has blossomed into a small campus, comprised of adaptive reuse of historic buildings ("UW Tacoma Carves out a Place in History," UW Magazine) along with new construction, and now an enrollment over 5,000 students--it started with 187--and a more metropolitan focus than the home campus, because the campus is part of Downtown Tacoma.  According to HistoryLink:

Urban renewal and economic development have been central aspects of UW Tacoma's impact on the local community. The move to the permanent campus in 1997 is widely credited with playing a key role in transforming what was previously a struggling neighborhood. Along with a new Washington State History Museum and a renovated Union Station (housing a U.S. District Court in a newly constructed addition), the emergence of UW Tacoma provided an architectural, community, and economic anchor at the southern end of downtown.

The surrounding neighborhood has since seen the opening of the Museum of Glass, a relocated Tacoma Art Museum, the Tacoma School of the Arts high school, the Link light rail system, and the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. Private resources complemented the public investments, with a hotel and several housing/mixed-use complexes opening by 2003. As one general estimate, approximately $1.5 billion in public and private money was invested in downtown Tacoma between 1990 and 2003.

To me, the proximity of Oakland to biotech and Silicon Valley makes this an opportunity of great potential for both Howard University and the City of Oakland.  Both benefit in different ways. But a campus, rather than a building is in keeping with HU's status as a premiere HBCU and a campus would stamp decidedly a west coast presence.

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Other blog entries on the leveraging of higher education for urban revitalization and growth.

-- "Better leveraging higher education institutions in cities and counties: Greensboro; Spokane; Mesa; Phoenix; Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington, DC," 2016
-- "Naturally occurring innovation districts | Technology districts and the tech sector," 2014
-- "Universities as elements of urban/downtown revitalization: the Portland State story and more," 2014
-- "President of Washington State University dies: fostered development of the "University District" adjacent to Downtown Spokane," 2015

-- "UW’s essential, and unappreciated, role in Seattle’s economic power," Seattle Times

Definition of insanity, National Parks/federal government shutdown

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

=========

For almost 15 years, I've written entries about how local governments need to do scenario planning vis a vis state and federal government installations in their cities, similarly states vis a vis the federal government.

This was spurred by federal government shutdowns leading to the closure of national parks, the impact on states and local governments, and their plaintive calls for opening the parks.  But also because of the impact on parks in DC, where the National Park Service runs a majority of the city's parks.

-- "Contingency planning in parks planning: Montgomery County Maryland edition," 2013
-- "Federal shutdown as another example of why local jurisdictions should have more robust contingency and master planning processes," 2013

This comes up with the SF Chronicle article, "Tourists from around the world blindsided by Muir Woods closure."

On any given year, Muir Woods National Monument draws hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world to take in the pristine views, trails and wildlife that make up one of the last ancient redwood forests left in the Bay Area.

On Wednesday, however, tourists were greeted by an unexpected sight at the entrance: a sign informing them the Marin County park was “closed due to a lapse in appropriations” after the federal government shutdown went into effect at 12:01 that morning. A ranger on duty stood in front of a growing line of cars and tried to offer alternative nearby parks for them to visit, but there was no way around the disappointment. The reservations many of the visitors had booked months in advance had been cancelled.

The thing is, there is a system where states (or local) governments can pay to keep parks open.

It's not like this hasn't happened before.

Tourists might be blindsided by this.  Local and state governments have no excuse.

Just like in 2013, the State of Utah is stepping in to fund national parks ("Utah will fund national parks amid government shutdown. Here’s what it will keep open," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Visitors may have better luck accessing information soon, though. The state of Utah is stepping in to keep national parks open, including visitor centers, which act as central hubs of information.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity is dedicating funds to cover visitor center costs in Utah’s five national parks, as well as Cedar Breaks National Monument, according to a Friday news release. “Utah’s National Parks will remain open,” said Natalie Randall, director of the Utah Office of Tourism and Film. “We are committed to supporting visitors in planning and preparing for their best trip to Utah, preserving our parks, and ensuring Utah communities and businesses that rely on national park visitation are supported.”

The National Park Service has estimated that it costs $8,000 per day to operate visitor centers at Utah’s five national parks and Cedar Breaks National Monument, according to a statement from Randall. “This is a fiscally responsible decision and we will continue to evaluate, as national parks visitor centers serve as an essential hub for visitor safety, sanitation, and public security,” she said.

Not California.

According to the SLT article, the daily cost to keep multiple parks open isn't very much.  So there isn't really an excuse except for lack of planning.

Note that the Republicans understand that closing parks is bad for them, given how "front facing" they are as public assets and places where citizens go to recreate.  So they try to keep them open, skating on the law ("National Parks Told to Remain Open During Shutdown Despite Risks," Bloomberg).

Urban economic development best practice is not found in DC

According to the Washington Post, "Legalized blackjack and poker among D.C. mayor’s proposals to boost economy."

Bowser said her proposal to legalize commercial poker and blackjack in the District would create new revenue streams and draw tourism. The administration does not yet have revenue projections; Nina Albert, deputy mayor of planning and economic development, said it would depend on how many poker and blackjack tournaments or events the city hosts, something they’re still working out.

“But even if we just had one or two marquee national tournaments here, that is another attraction that brings both national and international visitors to D.C., which is always the platform that we wanted to create for our entertainment ecosystem,” Albert said.

Talk about unimaginative.  When I first got involved in revitalization, I thought the city's economic development planners were good.  Over time, I felt that I continued to learn and they didn't.

I've written a bunch about ways the city could better develop its economy:

-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?," 2014
-- "DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project," 2021
-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part Two: Creating a graduate health education and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," 2018
-- "Naturally occurring innovation districts | Technology districts and the tech sector," 2014
-- "Better leveraging higher education institutions in cities and counties: Greensboro; Spokane; Mesa; Phoenix; Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington, DC," 2016.  Also, "Universities and ancillary economic development," (2025) versus "Straws and puffery: USC's DC "campus" as a lever for downtown revival," (2024)
-- "I wonder if Mayor Fenty hadn't dissolved the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative in 2007, merging it into another city agency, if development would have happened faster?," 2024

Even my suggesting an economic revitalization program for the city's poorest areas:

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

Or addressing the height limit as a way to expand heavy rail service in the city:

-- "Another attempt to raise discussion about the DC Height Limit," 2023

would be a step forward.

Poker is not it.  And I don't see how it communicates that "DC is open for business."  From the article:

“These investments and much-needed legislative changes send a clear message: D.C. is open for business,” Bowser said, standing in the offices of an investment consulting firm that received a D.C. business grant to expand and create jobs. “It is so important, especially now, with the changing footprint of the federal government, that we are creating good-paying jobs for D.C. residents.”

The proposed Commanders District looks a bit like an update of the Watergate.

P.S. WRT a new stadium for the Washington Commanders football team and the related "sports and entertainment district" ("Transformative $3.7 billion Commanders stadium deal passes D.C. Council," Washington Post), the economic impact studies for a similar development by the Chicago Bears returns less than one dollar for every dollar spent--and that includes a study by the Bears ("Arlington Heights weighs Bears' stadium economic impact pitch," Crain's Chicago Business).  Although to be fair, the DC proposed development is larger than that for Chicago.  From the Post:

Supporters say the public investment — more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds and more than $1 billion in tax breaks and other incentives for the Commanders — is worth it for the generational economic opportunity, while skeptics of publicly financed stadiums have questioned the return on investment and argue that the taxpayer contribution is overly generous to the team’s wealthy owners.

Although it's probably a better return than on video poker.

DC's Wharf District.  AP photo.

Note that the Washington Monthly, "To Create Abundant Housing, Ignore the YIMBY Playbook," does believe that DC is best practice on large scale infill development mostly of multiunit housing.  

A lot of that was due to a change in residential choice preferences in favor of urban living.  Not necessarily the city government being proactive. 

 Although, the NoMA district was stoked by transferable development rights from Downtown historic buildings ("NoMA, the neighborhood transit built," Urban Land).

And that redevelopment of The Wharf district is a positive ("The Wharf: DC’s most ambitious development project set to open," WTOP, Case Study, Perkins Eastman).  

Maybe even Walter Reed, although I personally think there could have been a better ROI from a different direction.

=======

Also see:

-- "The North-South Divide | Baltimore vs. Washington regional economic development | Still more industry in Greater Baltimore," 2021
-- "The East-West Divide | DC area regional economic development: anchors and where they are placed matter + airports | But military spending matters the most," 2021

Clustering/agglomeration economies and revival of Southern California's space sector

 

The book, The Rise of the Gunbelt: Military Remapping of Industrial America, describes how the Southwestern industrial economy was built on military spending.  

Southern California's industrial sector in part was built on the military-defense industry, and out of that grew businesses focused on "space" as opposed to aerospace.

As companies consolidated, manufacturing facilities closed and headquarters operations moved, leading to a severe decline in industrial employment.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on a renewal of business development in the sector, "The space race is transforming Southern California’s economy — again," partly as a result of SpaceX having most of its engineering operations in Orange County.

Some 128 aerospace, artificial intelligence and companies in other fields have been founded by former SpaceX employees — with 96 started in the last five years still in operation, according to the alumnifounders.com website run by a San Francisco tech executive.

Nearly half, or 63, were founded in Southern California, including 20 in aerospace. No other region comes close, including Silicon Valley or the Pacific Northwest, where Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company is based in Kent, Wash.

Some companies just come to the region to be close to same talent pool and aerospace manufacturing base that first attracted SpaceX. Rocket Lab, which launches small satellites, was founded in New Zealand but moved to the region in 2013 and opened new headquarters in Long Beach in 2020.

... A forthcoming report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. shows the county’s aerospace and defense industries added 11,000 jobs between 2022 and 2024. While those 58,700 plus total jobs are well below the historic peak, they had an average wage of $141,110 — more than twice the county average.

“A lot of folks have kind of made the assumption that the aerospace and defense industry has left the entire region,” said Stephen Cheung, chief executive of the organization. “What they didn’t see is a lot of the manufacturing was still here, and over the last 10 years, you’ve been seeing this transition into space commercialization, and now that’s stimulating a whole new ecosystem.”

Clustering and agglomeration economies:

-- "How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector," 2021
-- "Federal government research hub development initiative," 2023
-- "Universities and ancillary economic development (versus the anti-research agenda of the Trump Administration)," 2025
-- "Next Phase of Clustering of Business away from the Midwest," 2022

The Trump Administration aims to destroy the US's competitive advantage in technology development and innovation.

-- "Trump is destroying 100 years of competitive advantage in 100 days," Washington Post
-- "Crippling America’s Innovation Economy" Project Syndicate
-- "Attacks on the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem Are an Attack on a Wellspring of American Prosperity," Center for American Progress
-- "Trump Is Killing American Innovation," Foreign Affairs

University-based innovation:

-- "UM research announces 3rd straight increase in inventions from university work," Crain's Detroit Business

The University of Michigan achieved another year of research commercialization records for fiscal year 2025, with 673 invention reports and 326 license and option agreements. The news comes as cuts to university research — both from the federal administration and state government — loom.

... UM also launched 31 startup companies in 2025, only the second time the university has done so since 2020.

-- "UC San Diego ranks top 10 in world for universities driving innovation," San Diego Union Tribune.

 -- Top Fifty Universities Powering Global Innovation, Clarivate

The paper includes: A comprehensive analysis and top 50 ranking of the universities leading in research-to-innovation impact. The key relationships between universities and leading innovators. Visualized pathways showing global knowledge flow patterns between university research and industrial inventions.

Las Cruces (NM) Airport Master Plan | Airport Master Planning

 My writings about airport planning are pretty much limited to asking for there to be a transportation demand management plan as an element of a master plan.

-- "Manhattan Institute misses the point about the value of light rail transit connections to airports | Utility and the network effect: the transit network as a platform ," 2020
-- "Airport transportation demand management in flux," 2019
-- "Transportation demand management, transit: Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and Logan Airport, Boston," 2019
-- "London's Stansted Airport provides digital information on transit options," 2019
-- "Why not a bicycle hub at National Airport?, focused on capturing worker trips but open to all," 2017
-- "A brief comment on ground transportation at National Airport vis a vis VRE rail service," 2016
-- "Revisiting stories: ground transportation at airports (DCA/Logan)," 2017
-- "Airports and public transit access: O'Hare Airport and the proposed fast connection from Downtown Chicago," 2018
-- "More on airport-related transit/transit for visitors," 2013
-- "To and from origin stations can be difficult: More on the Silver Line and intra-neighborhood transit (tertiary network)," 2022

The Las Cruces plan is interesting in that they list economic development matters as a primary goal.  That's not that exceptional, but they way they lay it out may be.

A Vision for Las Cruces International Airport (LRU) 

The Las Cruces Master Plan process is built on eight guiding ideas that have been used to develop the overall vision for what LRU will be in the next ten years. Through the implementation of this plan, LRU will be: 

• Safe for all users
• Welcoming and supportive of business
• A hub for regional, national, and international tourism
• A center of education and job development
• Supported by the City
• In position to be an economic development engine
• Supportive of Aviation and Commercial Aerospace
• Important to the people of the Las Cruces region

-- "Economic impact of National and Dulles Airports," 2014
-- "Trial balloons in the Washington Post and Dulles Airport as an aerotropolis," 2013
--"Aerotropoli and rethinking the scale of mobility networks in the context of a global economy," 2013
-- "Do tax incentives pay off? : Illinois; Tennessee; Rosslyn + "The Airport Access Factor"," 2017

But the plan mostly covers airport needs like a new watchtower.   Likely that's the "fault" of FAA planning requirements which are pretty much limited to the infrastructure elements of flying in and flying out, just like how previous to the Biden Administration, airport revenues couldn't be spent on transit systems connecting to the airport versus airport-exclusive systems.

There are two mentions of parking and provision of lodging.

But there's no TDM element.

========

Local ad promoting improvements at the Orange County Airport in California.  Art by Darren McArdel.

User/visitor experience.  I have also written about this from time to time about airports, and how the very police like US officials vis a vis international air travelers doesn't show the US too well--it's worse now--a point made by Tyler Brule in a Financial Times column many years ago.  From a past blog entry:

Airports, visitability and international visitors: 
Bureaucracy dooms the brand promise of Brand America

Another "problem" is that three of the main entry points into "Washington" aren't in DC proper-- National Airport and Dulles Airport in Virginia and Marshall-BWI Airport in Maryland.  Each has a visitor information desk, but none of the services are comparable to the airports with the best visitor information set ups.

Plus, at Dulles Airport especially, the experience for visitors leaves a lot to be desired, which is something that Tyler Brule of Monocle Magazine mentions from time to time, especially in his weekly column in the Financial Times, where he has been very negative about Dulles Airport, because of big problems with the customs entry process.  From "Let’s play ‘Guess where I am?’":

I’ve just come off an airliner and it’s absolute pandemonium. There are gate agents screaming for transfer passengers, there are sniffer dogs, there are loads of immigration officers and there’s a general sense of disorganization. My fellow passengers look bewildered and flustered after their eight-hour, 45-minute flight from Frankfurt, and there’s a lot of huffing and puffing as we’re divided up into groups of arriving passengers and “connectors”. ...

description of 1,000 people waiting to go through ICE at shift change, when many people leave their posts, with the result that even fewer agents are there to work with the passengers.

As I approach the desk, I feel like giving the young gentleman a lecture about how bad this whole performance is for Brand USA – particularly on top of a whole week of television reports about the new fee that visitors will have to pay to get a visa and how these funds will be used to create a campaign to encourage more tourism to the US. I want to ask him if he (and his bosses not far away in the District of Columbia) think a 90-minute wait in a dumpy airport is any way to welcome the world and if his department is really that interested in having people visit the US.

Of course, this is even worse now given the "America First" and anti-global rhetoric and actions of the Federal Government as discussed in the previous entry, "National Tourism Week (May 7th - 13th), Public Diplomacy, National Heritage Areas, etc."

When air travel was "taking off", airlines touted airport improvements.  Now flying is pretty much a commodity, although many companies do distinguish service in multiple ways still.

New Pan American Airlines Worldport Terminal, JFK Airport, c. 1960

Combine this experience, plus the then less than sterling experience of getting to the city from the airport--this will change in a few years when there is subway service there, but the location of the subway station will be less than ideal--and then think about what this says not only for Brand America ("Brand USA, a campaign to lure back foreign tourists — and their money" Washington Post and "Re-branding America" from the Sunday Boston Globe) but BrandDC (see the blog entry "Creating Brand Washington"), and is it any reason that the number of international visitors to the US is falling?

Note that while the FT piece is from 2011, the problem at Dulles continues.  See "Editor's note: BWI is the big winner in the battle for passengers" from the Washington Post.  And the MWAA has responded with a advertising campaign.  But I would aver the problem is more structural and fundamental--something that marketing can fix, but advertising can't.

An evaluation of area airports in terms of the "visitability" approach is long overdue.   

I don't get Airport Planning magazine anymore but a lot of the articles are about the improvement of the visitor experience, throughput, etc., including the quality, range, and cost of retail amenities.  (Remember when it was a big deal that airports upgraded their retail offer?  Pittsburgh was a leader in this, partly because a British firm had the contract to implement what they already were experienced in doing).

-- "Some DC tourism issues (National Tourism Week: May 7th - May 13th)," 2017

This comes up in the NYT article "Airport Lounges Sound Luxurious. I Keep Getting Duped," about the quality (not very) of airport lounges.  That's another element of the visitor experience that smart airport executives and planning teams should consider when developing master plans.

The Wall Street Journal also runs an annual article on the quality of the airport experience.  From "Best Large U.S. Airports 2023":

Each airport is evaluated on 30 factors that span the trip, from buying a ticket to arriving at a final destination. Using data from government agencies, a survey of travelers conducted by our research partner Dynata and other sources, the Journal’s rankings highlight the airports that boast on-time flights, short waits throughout the trip and the amenities that travelers like best.