The Big Questions

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.

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.

Good Government

So I am way behind on picking up on this because I have been relying on contact info I already had for members of the Common Council, but I was please to see that the printed pamphlet with the 2007 Albany Common Council calendar and contact info for the council members has a lot more information it in than previous iterations. Things like:

• a description of how to comment at council meetings and public hearings
• an explanation of who the people sitting up at the dais during council meetings are
• a description of how the president pro tempore and majority leader are chosen and what they do
• a listing not only of the committees and their chairs, but also the city boards, their purposes, and when they meet

It's a small thing, but it's one of those small symbolic things that can a lot about governmental attitudes toward participation. Kudos to whoever added it in there.

(You can pick up your own copy at the Common Council office of City Hall, Room 206.)

Constructive Suggestions

After two weeks, some ideas, including a proposal for the comp plan process, have settled out of some of my thoughts on the SDAT process. I talk about it in my current column.

"There’s a tricky balancing act called for between those who will want the process to be a free-wheeling forum to say whatever’s on their minds and feel heard, and those who want to roll up their sleeves and work together on just what exactly our goals are for the city and its key assets, what we’re going to do about some of the tricky problems, and how we want to handle the hard trade-offs."

Props

By the way, it's easy to critique, especially for someone like me who is interested in all the little nuts and bolts. But I think it's important to take a step back and throw out some kudos:

To the planning department, for all their prep work

To the people who showed up, many of them despite skepticism and being unsure where the process will lead, and who engaged in many hours of exchange

To the team, who, I was surprised to learn just yesterday are volunteers. That's a lot of work on a volunteer basis. It was a recurrent theme at the town hall meeting last night for participants to offer their heartfelt appreciation for the team's time and attention, and I second that.

More on Recap

Oops. Getting behind here. I never posted a link to my column of two weeks ago, which critiques the recent Recapitalize Albany report as not actually believing strongly enough in the possibilities for Albany (only one of many critiques that can be made).

". . . the more troubling pessimism comes in a subtler guise: plans for revitalizing or promoting the city, proposed by supposed city boosters, that, upon closer examination, are uncreative, unambitious, short-term, or even slightly desperate-sounding."

Democracy in Albany took on a few other points as well. That's the first of several DIA posts on the subject. I'm less cynical (basically, from my experience, I find there are actually a few lot of good/neutral bankers/developers out there in the community development world), but definitely in sympathy with his gut reactions. There's not a single question he raises that doesn't deserve a careful and thorough answer. And he's right about it being ridiculous to say Cap City, a fledgling organization, was chosen to do redevelopment work because it has a lot of experience.

No sense of embarassment

Tim O'Brien's simple news article on the comprehensive plan board elegantly contrasts the Common Council's approach to finding comp plan board members—a formal notice seeking applicants, a description of the position, an explanation of how to apply, to whom, and by when—and Mayor Jennings'—quietly talk to people you know. Well, that's not exactly what he said, but how else do applications magically appear?:

Jennings has not set a firm deadline for resumes for people wanting to be appointed by him, but he has begun receiving them, said his executive assistant, Robert Van Amburgh.

"He plans to more fully review them," Van Amburgh said.

It may well be that the mayor does already know most of the people who'd be good for the board, but then again he may not. Given the Recap Albany kerfuffle, you'd think he could at least put up a show of wanting to have a fair and open process. At least this way we know where we stand.

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)

Your Website Is Not A Brochure

Once you release information to the press, you want people who read/view the resulting stories to be able to get further information if they want it, right?

I mean, isn't the point, say, of telling the newspaper about Alive at Five's first concert of the year that you want people to go? To all of them? Rather than having the website listed in the article still showing 2006's schedule (in *June* 2007)?

Also, if a story is running about your special Recapitalize Albany committee's final report, wouldn't it make you uncomfortable that your very new premiered-in-the-Palace-Theatre website still describes the committee as getting underway, and anyone who wants to read the report for themselves has to show up in person downtown (because it's "too big to e-mail")?

For that matter, why would you announce that the website was done in the first place, when six out of eight links on the zoning page (a key place of interest for relocating businesses) aren't live yet? The events page is filled in through a week and a half from now . . . not behind yet, but not exactly giving us a lot of planning time either.

If I were on the Recapitalize Albany committee, or something like it, I would have lobbied for a recommendation about how the city needs someone in charge of its Internet presence who is actually web savvy, someone who understands how it used and what is expected of it, and makes sure that keeping it up-to-date and useful is not an afterthought. Hiring a consultant who can make something that looks pretty and then forgetting it about it is a waste of money. Your website is not a brochure, folks.

Nor is it unimportant. From The Rebirth of Older Industrial Cities, put out by the Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Northeastern University: "Businesses seeking new locations for their operations – and the location specialists those businesses employ – often initially explore various location possibilities from afar by checking websites to gather relevant data on local communities. It is difficult for local officials to even get a chance to 'show their wares' to prospective businesses unless they have attractive, compelling, and information-rich websites that provide the precise information that firms normally seek when making location decisions." (emphasis mine) I'm guessing they felt that "not seriously out of date" was a given.

This is relevant to Albany's planning process, because it is these very kinds of things: going from idea to practical implementation, shifting old habits, learning to make new and improved systems work, that we are going to need to both get a great plan and then make something happen with it.

Pine Who?

I just gave the city's application for the SDAT grant another read. It is full of exciting and important issues and ideas, from bus rapid transit to green building standards.

But there is nonetheless one rather glaring omission. Under a list of issues that covers air & water quality, energy efficiency, transportation, housing, revitalization, public policy/planning/land use and public spaces, there's not a single mention of the Pine Bush. Not one. In fact, the only time the Pine Bush is mentioned in the whole application is when the Pine Bush Preserve Commission is listed as participant in the process. It doesn't even show up in the discussion of the city's geography. If I'd been the Pine Bush Preserve Commission, I'd've had some words to say before signing off on one of the identically worded letters of support attached to the application.

Now, there's already far more in that application than can be addressed by the SDAT process. Still, it's rather stunning to have within your borders an extremely rare ecosystem that is a draw for biologists all over the country and home to rare and endangered species, and which has been the subject of a massive decades-long conservation effort, dozens of lawsuits, and a bitter controversy over the expansion of the city landfill, and not mention it at all. (For that matter, it's also pretty crazy to have an impending waste crisis and not mention it in a sustainability assessment beyond one euphemistic line about evaluating "landfill efficiency.")

If the tension between landfill and preservation in the Pine Bush isn't a sustainability challenge, I don't know what is. I'm sympathetic to the idea that improving the rest of the city in all the ways that are listed is one important piece of reducing the development pressures on the Pine Bush. But even if that works in the long run, that alone won't ensure that we reach the goal of an ecologically viable preserve.  It needs direct attention. And if done right, it could support the overall economy and revitalization of the whole city. The Pine Bush is an asset, not just a challenge.

This is an issue that screams for some outside perspective. Though it shouldn't be the only thing we talk about, it would be great to have a member of our SDAT team who could bring some expertise to bear on this thorny issue.

Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine that it's not precisely the political thorniness of the issue that kept it out of the application. Could admitting that protecting the Pine Bush needs serious discussion be too much like conceding a point for some in the city administration? If so, that's sad, and a bad portent.  If we're going to make a solid plan for revitalizing this city, we can't avoid major topics because they've become hot potatoes. Yet another reason that the agenda should be set by a public process.

I was glad, at least, to hear that while they didn't actually get to visit the Pine Bush on their preliminary SDAT visit, Alan and Erin "heard a lot about it" and are considering at least the landfill question to be one of the items on the agenda. I know I'm not the only one who is eager to get into that conversation.