ReCap Recap

So I've given the ReCapitalize Albany report (pdf) a read through.

Many of you will remember the mind-boggling constitution of the ReCapitalize Albany committee: 45 people, hand-picked business and government elite, only one African-American, 2/3 not residents of the city. After huge outcry, Mayor Jennings added seven more people, including three African-Americans. Hardly a dramatic overhaul. (This was one of the drivers for adding residency requirements to the Albany Comp Plan board.)

So many people, myself included, were highly skeptical that the report that came out was going to be at all useful. As council members Corey Ellis and Barbara Smith pointed out at the time, the people in the room determined the content of the conversation.

This is and isn't true. Somebody involved clearly was doing their homework in terms of urban revitalization practices, and there are a lot of very good ideas in there, even some that people in the field have tried unsuccessfully to convince the city of before. Having the support and energy of some of the region's business movers and shakers behind these initiatives could be a really good thing.

But there are also blind spots, some of them large, that line up pretty cleanly with the expected biases of a group so constituted. Some could be addressed by in how the recommendations of this report are implemented; others will need to be hashed out from scratch in another venue. I'm going to talk about some of these in more detail in next week's column, but here's an outline of some highlights and gaps. (Recommendations or topics of the report in bold)

Focus on the "People Climate." As the world gets smaller and everywhere is willing to offer major subsidy packages to businesses, it's becoming clearer and clearer that one of the major ways to give a city a competitive advantage, economically, is just make sure it's somewhere that a businesses' employees will want to live. "Quality of Life" is becoming a rallying cry not just for neighborhood associations, but also for economic development agencies. "It is crucial that Albany creates both a friendly 'people climate' as well as a friendly business climate," the committee wrote in their executive summary. They are absolutely right. Whether their recommendations follow through on that as much as they might think depends to some extent on which people you're talking about.

Make sure the Harriman Campus "weaves in" to the surrounding fabric of the city and doesn't compete with downtown. A comprehensive planning process will be a good forum in which to look at the coordination of various smaller plans like this.

Promote a residential downtown, and work on gap financing and other ways to make historic commercial rehab feasible. Good and good. As I said before, however, we need to be very careful if we create a development authority to structure it so it is accountable, transparent, and has a clear, focused mission.

Creating a land bank and getting site control over vacant properties. Yes, yes, yes. I would add: The city's boosters should work with other upstate cities to promote the kind of legislation that New Jersey and Michigan have instituted that allow for expedited foreclosure of abandoned properties in bad repair even when they are not behind on taxes.

I also suggest that rather than more shuffling between the city and county (the county takes possession of foreclosed city property), we look into a countywide land bank, as Genesee County (home to Flint, Michigan) has done. The resale of more marketable abandoned properties in the rest of county helps fund the necessary work on weaker-market parcels in the cities. It helps the whole county because as property values rise in the city, they also rise in the whole region.

Also on this note, the committee at one point makes reference to trying break the cycle of abandonment, where properties are sold at auction to speculators and reabandoned. The report also notes the expectation that the city's population will stabilize around 95,000, significantly lower than it was at its peak. Given these two things, I was surprised to see no suggestion that a land bank consider a side lot program, whereby vacant lots are sold to adjacent homeowners as side yards (on condition of maintaining them). For lots that are too small to build much on given current codes, in neighborhoods with little green space, such a program could be a way to reward local homeowners (and increase the value of their property), beautify neighborhoods, and break the speculation cycle.

Reduce bureaucracy for housing rehab programs, especially letting people be/choose their own contractors. Amen!

Downtown parking A fair amount of space is devoted to the problems of parking downtown, and it is good that the report notes the pernicious effects on a healthy downtown of surface lots and blank garage walls and otherwise poorly planned parking. It is certainly true that parking must be considered: This is not Manhattan and everyone is not going to suddenly give up car ownership. On the other hand, expounding at length about structured parking garage design guidelines and then devoting one titchy little vague paragraph to "Oh yeah, and we should, like, improve transit, too" is not only lame, it shows a failure of the kind of ambitious vision we need if we want a successful residential downtown. More on this later.

Support Neighborhood Commercial Areas. The report, appropriately, waxes enthusiastic about the value of our neighborhood commercial corridors, their walkability and locally owned businesses. Sadly, it did not have the guts to go beyond suggesting various (good) financial supports for these areas to recommending protecting their integrity by guarding their C1 zoning status against variances or outright zoning changes that disrupt them with suburban-style highway commercial development, drive throughs, etc.

Community Benefits Agreements and Incentives. The report makes two glancing references to community benefits agreements, which are contracts in which developers or businesses receiving substantial public money (directly, or in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, free land) promise certain community goods in return: local hiring, job training, a new park, etc. ARISE and several council members are hard at work negotiating a CBA for the convention center, and the Recap Albany report off-handedly mentions that perhaps some downtown living incentives could be part of that.

I have nothing against downtown living incentives, but it strikes me that compared to the economic and "people climate" boost the city could get from the kinds of things that are being worked on—job training, pre-apprenticeship programs, and local hiring commitments for residents of Albany's poorest neighborhoods—that downtown living incentives would be a low priority.

This highlights a crucial gap in the report, which is any consideration at all given to equity and economic inclusion for the city's poor. Persistent economic gaps and high rates of poverty harm everyone and will hobble attempts to be a truly world class city.

The ReCap committee also notes that some sort of incentives for locating ancillary or back office facilities in the city could be included in the huge package being given to Sematech and others at Albany Nanotech. Frankly, for what we're giving them, we could require some commitments to urban revitalization—facilities location, hiring, etc. They have enough incentives.

Education Education is less of my field, so I'm not going to presume to have as much to say about this section of the report, but it's worth noting that I found it odd/interesting that the mandate for this subcommittee—discuss how the business community can help improve education—was so very much narrower than the mandate of the development and neighborhood subcommittees. Were they recognizing their own limitations in terms of knowing how to best run a school system, or were they trying to limit the political fallout that comes from telling schools what to do? Or did they just not have time to talk about everything, given that they had school system and charter school reps in the room and probably had to spend considerable time just agreeing on the carefully worded references to that hot potato? Who knows.

Clearly education is a crucial area to work on in terms of helping Albany revitalize, and having the business community chip in sounds great, though I doubt it's really going to make or break an educational turnaround. More useful thoughts on this when I collect them.

Next up, of course, is to see how this all gets implemented.

Comments

[Johnny Kelly]

I agree with you that this plan has its good and bad sides. I was born and raised in Albany and was kind of happy that finally people were coming up with ideas. I have noticed that over the past five years are area is becoming very attractive due to the amazing housing stock, proximity to NYC and Boston, and its culture. Like NY and Boston though I fear that the developers will gain an upperhand on the citizens of Albany and more or less turn it into a boutique city kind of like Cambridge ma, my new home. Albany needs to use its strengh, and I am confident that when people see what this city has they will want to be a part of it. Albany has the walkable streets that everyone craves, and brownstones that you never see. Unfortunatly, I am sure the politics of the city will drive away anyone who considers it. My family has been in Albany for 90 years and I left because of it. Such a shame for a city that has so much potential.