The Big Questions

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Hi all. I'm sorry to do this, but clearly I'm not succeeding in keeping up this blog. Unfortunately, the freelance lifestyle only allows me so many volunteer projects, and this one was too much. I don't have time to hound the city and the comp plan board into giving me information as simple as when the meetings are. I had high hopes of things like interviews with the board members, but they've been told not to talk to the press. I'm sincerely disappointed that the board's foundation-laying work is so far receiving so little publicity, though I still have hope that with the right consultant, the public meetings and actually plan-drafting could be pretty good.

I will continue to show up when I can, but I figure when I'm being this sporadic, it's better for me to comment in my column than in a blog. Perhaps when public meetings heat up, I'll restart.

Land bank limbo?

One of the most exciting case studies in the recent report I co-authored on small cities, To Be Strong Again, was the Genesee County Land Bank and its work in Flint, Michigan. Many, many voices, including those on the Sustainable Design Assessment Team have been saying that Albany needs a land bank, which is a basically a nonprofit government entity with the ability to acquire and make strategic decisions about the use of foreclosed and/or abandoned property rather than letting it cycle through speculative and irresponsible ownership over and over.

The Flint land bank unlocked millions of dollars in property values and revitalization just by systematically demolishing, rehabbing, selling to long-term owners, or greening thousands of problem properties. Ohio is currently developing legislation to set up similar entities there.

New York needs land banks. Every single upstate city would benefit markedly from a county or regionwide entity like the ones allowed in Michigan. But state legislation is needed to allow this.

A bill that passed both the Assembly and the Senate this session (it does happen!) would be a first step. It would allow county land banks to be created as subsidiaries of the state urban development corporation. Unfortunately, due to some skittishness on the part of legislators, it would only allow a maximum three. I had trouble believing that when I first read it, but I'm told it's not a typo. Still, it's better than nothing, and I'm willing to bet that if done right, those three would show impressive enough results to encourage the legislature to allow for the creation of more.

But we may not get to find out. As of now, Gov. Paterson is unsure if he will sign the bill, citing concerns about state liability if it takes ownership of vacant properties. While I see concern, and there could have been other ways to structure the bill that would avoid it, my first thought is let's keep "liability" in perspective. Abandoned properties are magnets for crime, and they have well documented ripple effects in terms of physical neglect, lost property values, and fleeing retail and services, with very real, very negative consequences for remaining residents. The human cost, not to mention the financial drain on municipal coffers in terms of increased service cost and decrease taxes is huge. These costs come back to the state eventually. On the other hand, better managed and redeveloped land is a much lower risk for everyone.

The state takes on the risk of lawsuit every day by doing the things it needs to do, whether it's law enforcement or environmental protection. Especially with the mortgage crisis mounting, giving localities the tools they need to manage abandoned properties is something the state needs to do, and frankly, it's worth some risk.

Albany in context

We all know that Albany is no New York City (thank goodness!). But neither is it Cobleskill (no offense to Cobleskill) or Malta. Small cities like Albany, Schenectady, and Troy often fail register in the larger conversation about urban revitalization, with large philanthropies and federal programs funneling a lot of their innovative work into the big cities, whether it's New York, Philly, or Cleveland.

As anyone who lives in one knows, however, small cities are different. Not entirely different, but different. We have buses, but no subways. We have culture, but not a lot of anonymity. The distance from the poorest neighborhoods to the wealthiest is smaller, physically and psychologically. Our civic capacity is thinner, but our ability to implement large scale change (given the right leadership) is greater.

The unique challenges and assets of Capital Region cities and dozens of other smaller (under 150,000 population) older Northeastern and Midwestern cities are explored in a new report put out by the national equitable development organization PolicyLink called To Be Strong Again, co-authored by PolicyLink Associate Director Radhika Fox and yours truly.

From the introduction:

Report back: Comp Board Meeting, 7/15

First, best wishes to Councilman and chair of the Comp Plan Board Dan Herring who is reported to have injured himself fairly badly while on vacation and recovering from surgery in an out-of-town hospital. We hope to see him back and healthy soon!

So July. It's a hard month to get anything done in, but Albany's Comp Plan Board squeaked to a quorum (which for a board this large is a substantial number of people) and put in a solid, useful hour of work on Tuesday evening, pressing through the niggly but necessary details of how to word the consultant RFQ and how consultant applicants will be vetted and interviewed.

Board member Karen Strong, who gets major points for attending with her 8-month-old son on her front in a sling, joked with me about looking forward to reading about "how boring we were,"  but you know, this is where some of the most important work gets done.

The basic gist of the meeting is fairly straightforward. Doug Melnick reported that the planning department had done an internal assessment of what it was able to do itself, and what was appropriate for it to do. He reported that the department can handle all the necessary mapping in-house, a substantial money-saver, but that while they were all capable of leading community meetings they felt it would be more appropriate to ask the consultants to be in charge of public input and public meetings, offering a more "objective" forum. (I agree.)

There was some back and forth about how specific to make the RFQ, with various board members wanting to be sure that certain elements of what we're looking for, from riverfront revitalization and natural resources to the importance of getting input from a diverse cross-section of the population, were
spelled out and others, especially commissioner Mike Yevoli (who, as vice chair of the board was running the meeting in Herring's absence), itching to get the RFQ out there and reminding the group that an RFQ is a request for qualifications and to some extent you don't want to spell everything out, you want to see what the consultants figure out and prioritize for themselves because it gives you a sense of their priorities and competence.

While I think that if it had been a more contentious issue there would have been a problem with Yevoli both facilitating and participating in the discussion when he has such a firm position, in this case it didn't seem to be a very big deal. Mostly, he's right, as long as the very good issues people were raising make it into the interview questions and the scope of work, they don't need to be spelled out now.

The board also decided to create a 5-member selection committee to handle the interviewing, but to let the entire board vet and rate proposals first and jointly choose the finalists for the committee to interview. While I was amused at the argument that having the whole board audit the interviews that the committee holds would be "overwhelming" for the consultants (aren't these people we're expecting to run large, chaotic, potential contentious public meetings of hundreds of people?), overall it seems like the process they're heading toward is a good one, balancing full board input with practical process.

It's especially good to see general agreement on weighing "project approach," which will include the part about how a public input strategy is crafted, heavily when assigning points. It will be interesting to see the criteria and weighing formalized and the interview process go forward.

In general, it was clearly a benefit to the board to have members with experience in hiring consultants and working on planning issues, but also a benefit to have those who don't just fall into what feels like a familiar process and were willing to point out things like the fact that even if the board agrees that it is intangibles--personalities, how well they're likely to engage the citizenry, etc.--that are going to be most important, the group could still stand a discussion of its own vision of what the perfect consultant is before deputizing a committee to judge those intangibles. After some digression sorting out "vision" for the comp plan itself from "vision" for the process and the consultant, it seems like that conversation will be part of the next meeting.

I for one hope that the board goes with Scott Townsend's suggestion that the scope of work include a formalized implementation plan, despite Yevoli's caution that it will take extra "time, effort, and money" from the board and the consultant. Everyone wants to see this plan acted on (you know, presuming it doesn't suck. But I don't think it will), and having the firs several steps laid out can go a long way.

So there you go. It's underway, the board is serious and seems to be working pretty well, and things will only get more interesting from here.

Waste streams are not unalterable

An interesting point, in light of Albany's landfill woes:

"The London Borough of Ealing issued a contract for a total waste minimisation solution, not simply a contract for refuse collection and another one for recycling. In this instance, the Council was buying an outcome, waste minimisation, with the precise approach to meeting that outcome left up to the contractor."

Although a lot of what they are doing (MS Word file) is education stuff or lobbying for legislative changes, there's some interesting concrete items in there, such as delivering free composters to households and schools; subsidizing cloth diaper ("real nappies") purchases and laundering services; and conducting its own waste audit and waste reduction plan for government operations.

In case you read closely and were confused...

The team leader confirmed my suspicions on both of the following errors in the SDAT report:

The phrase "Albany Plans B&W" in the exec summary is not some secret code for an Albany asset you don't know about. It appears to be a misplaced file name for the picture on that page.

On page 26, this sentence—"While it can include additional subsidized or income-targeted housing, it should be driven by the availability of funding for subsidized housing development"—should actually read "While it can include additional subsidized or income-targeted housing, it should NOT be driven by the availability of funding for subsidized housing development."

Some of my favorite quotes/points from the SDAT report

"Albany, N.Y., has remarkable assets . . . But everybody we talked to felt that Albany is not making the most of its assets. Why?

It’s about making connections.

There are many plans: North Albany, South End, Arbor Hill, Midtown. These are good plans, but the connections are missing. How do they relate to the rest of the city and to an overall vision for Albany’s future?

Many important initiatives are going on, but we sense that people don’t always plan or carry out those initiatives together. People and institutions are going off in different directions—inside city government and between city government and the school district, the state, the universities, the hospitals,
and so on.

The central question that Albany’s leaders must answer is this: How can people make
better connections, complement each other’s efforts, and make the most of their resources
and energy?"

“While the basic underlying regional market dynamics are favorable for investment,
the relative ease of access to the suburbs for Albany workers (in terms of travel time
and cost) means that the city must focus on creating a community that will attract
lifestyle owners and renters rather than focusing on convenience as a major asset.
These principal assets will draw lifestyle-oriented buyers and renters:
• The city’s great historic housing stock
• Urban fabric and retail
• Benefits to a sustainable environment.”

"The historic fabric of downtown—reflected in its streetscapes, its buildings, and, ultimately, its relationship to the Hudson River—is the area’s greatest asset, which will make the city’s aspirations for the area possible. To the extent that fabric is lost or compromised through poor planning and development decisions, that loss will translate directly into fewer opportunities for economic development, jobs, and revenues."

"The SDAT believes that every possible effort should be made to avoid expanding the landfill
while mitigating the fiscal impact on the city." (OK, so it hedges, but it's fairly clear.)

"The city should actively support the CDTA BRT plans for Central Avenue, including making any reasonable changes with respect to removing on-street parking and changes to traffic patterns. The BRT system, if properly designed and implemented, could significantly enhance the Central Avenue corridor, which would translate into increased property values and development opportunities. The city should not allow itself to miss this opportunity."

"Whenever the city contemplates any traffic, circulation, or roadway improvement, it must ask, “How can this improvement simultaneously improve pedestrian and bicycle travel?”

The good "news" and the hard "news"

No great surprises here. Except in the area of abandoned properties, where there's a clear and detailed set of steps, it's more like a set of priorities to focus on than suggestions of how to go about addressing those priorities, but, hey, focus is good.

The overwhelming message, as phrased in the executive summary is that Albany has a lot going for it (more than most similar cities, really), and its challenges are real, but are things that other places have handled, so it's basically going to be leadership and the ability to overcome our fragmentation, and make coordinated connections—between institutions, areas of the city—that's going to determine how well the city moves forward.

This is, of course, interesting to hear outsiders say. And it is, of course, good news and bad news. Good news in that it says it's quite possible to make things a lot better. Bad news in that one can't just write leadership and connections and cooperation into the zoning code and make them happen.

However, perhaps some of the proposals in here—especially the abandoned properties steps, downtown housing, coordinated planning between institutions, and some of the more individual transportation and open space and neighborhood planning recommendations—will inspire folks and can be nodes around which to practice coming together, forging consensus, and getting something done.

SDAT final report, finally

This just in. (I'm told the delay was in production at AIA, not on the part of the team.) As it turns out, that means it's coming out at the beginning of our having a comp plan board. Could be worse.

I will have comments as soon as I get to read it.

Sustainable Design Assessment Team, AIA, final report for Albany

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Cover letter from the city:

As you probably remember, in January 2007, Albany, N.Y., submitted a proposal to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for a Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) to assist the city and its citizens in addressing key isustainability ssues facing the community. The AIA accepted the proposal and, after a preliminary visit by a small group in April, the SDAT members arrived in Albany on August 6. For three days, the team members, working closely with local officials, community leaders, technical experts, and citizens, studied the community and its concerns. During those three days, the team came to understand the issues and used its expertise to frame a wide range of recommendations, which were presented to the community in a public meeting on August 8 2007.

On behalf of Mayor Jennings, I am pleased to provide you with this electronic copy of the final Albany Sustainable Design Assessment Team Report.  We look forward to working with the newly appointed Comprehensive Plan Board and the people of Albany to incorporate this report, and elements of sustainability in general, into the development of Albany's first comprehensive plan.

a quick note

Though no one has said so, I realized that my comment about "now that things are moving again" might seem dismissive of all the hard work that went into interviewing and selecting comp plan board members--or of how important those choices were.

So, for the record, that's not what I meant. It's just that I and I think many others are eager to get into talking about content. On we go!