From today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
If the 2-year-old Lowe's home improvement store in Wauwatosa were to go under in this economic downturn - and no one is suggesting it will - residents in that Milwaukee suburb wouldn't have to look at its empty shell for long.
Like many communities across the country, Wauwatosa has taken steps to protect itself against so-called ghost boxes, the hulking remains of what are often big box stores left vacant when retailers downsize or relocate . . .
Wauwatosa's provision, adopted as part of its big-box ordinance in 2005, requires developers of buildings 50,000 square feet and larger to set aside 20 cents a square foot in the city's land conservation fund - about $28,000 in Lowe's case - which can be tapped to raze the building if it sits empty for more than a year.
"This is exactly the climate we were anticipating when we adopted this," Wauwatosa Community Development Director Nancy Welch said shortly after Home Depot announced this month that it would close 15 stores, including three in Wisconsin.
Widely criticized in the development community at the time, Wauwatosa's provision has been touted by the American Planning Association as one of the innovative ways communities can protect themselves if a retailer departs.
Others include higher architectural standards that make buildings easier to reuse; requiring developers to take out demolition bonds; and banning clauses in leases that prohibit the owner of a building, once vacated, from renting it to a retailer's competitor.
The lack of such policies has really hurt Oshkosh. Notice how the Wauwatosa Director of Community Development talks about a "climate we were anticipating," suggesting a future-orientation that ought to be at the core of all development.
Perhaps a good question for the city manager candidates would be, "What kind of economic climate do you expect we will see over the next 10-20 years and how do you propose the city plan for it?"
As for the big box stores, Wal-Mart is of course the Big Kahuna. Hillary Clinton now criticizes their practices, but such was not always the case as revealed in this ABC report:
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2 comments:
"Wauwatosa's provision, adopted as part of its big-box ordinance in 2005, requires developers of buildings 50,000 square feet and larger to set aside 20 cents a square foot in the city's land conservation fund - about $28,000 in Lowe's case - which can be tapped to raze the building if it sits empty for more than a year."
That same suggestion was discussed in the ONW forums a year ago. I would like to submit that it be discussed again and made a policy in new development.
The critics of big box stores such as Stacey Mitchel at the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minnesota in her boo The Big Box Swindle and other writngs fro ILSR stress the
amount that big box retailers take out of the community. I'm sure a demo bond is small change to these places Lowes.
What Minnesota has adopted (and described by James Howard Kunstler) is to have a land based tax system rather than a property based tax system.
The property based tax system allows those ghost stores or demoed lots to pay taxes far below current levels if the lot remains vacant for, say 30 years, as was the case with a downtown Penney's store in Appleton. Realtors call this the
holding cost. But what it does is prevent new development. If it works in Minnesota, it can work here.
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