Oportunity Lay In Redevelopment Ashes

Phoenix Lurking For Emeryville?

Collapse Of Redevelopment Agency Will Provide Opportunity

Opinion/News Analysis

Welcome to 2012!  On this day many residents will no doubt speculate on Emeryville's future.  As it turns out, over the next year and more, we will be harshly buffeted by forces outside our boundaries and beyond our control.  The recent California Supreme Court decision to dissolve the State's redevelopment agencies will alter Emeryville's course, for better or worse.  It's our job, the people that live here, to make sure it winds up being for the better.

We are fated to live in interesting times as Emeryille sits on the cusp of a new post-redevelopment era.

Whenever events conspire to dramatically transform an existing political paradigm, as surely as the day follows the night, the forces of greed will rise up and try to use the crisis to serve their interests.  And we can be assured here in Emeryville too, these forces will attempt to reconfigure our town in ways that don't serve the resident's interests.

What Have We Lost?

First, a little history: the redevelopment concept was born in 1945 as a way to use government action in city planning to eliminate blight; something the private sector was incapable of doing.  In Emeryville, redevelopment was implemented in 1976.  

The idea is to use the government to seize property in blighted areas by use of Eminent Domain and shuttle the land to private developers with approved development projects and then use the increased property valuation to fund a Redevelopment Agency to continue on the blight elimination regime. This increase in taxes brought on by the increased economic activity is a public/private partnership known as 'tax increment' financing.  As easy and good as it all sounds, alas, this is not a magic money machine and these tax diversions to the Redevelopment Agency are made at the expense of the government of the State of California; as a result public schools and public safety have taken a hit.

Redevelopment was never meant to be permanent though many agencies have existed for decades, diverting 12% of property taxes away from school districts and contributing to California's education crisis.  In its place, redevelopment has shuttled this money over to favored developers; in Emeryville that would be mostly Wareham Development and Madison Marquette Development, the builders of the Bay Street Mall and various office towers in town.

35 Years Of Redevelopment In Emeryville

Emeryville's Redevelopment Agency has been better than many other cities' across California. We've mostly avoided the horror show of edge city farmland being called 'blight' and wholesale graft conducted by crooked politicians.
Emeryville's Redevelopment Agency built the popular Doyle/Hollis Park two years ago, clearly a major success by any measurement.  There have been other projects also that have increased livability shepherded by the Redevelopment Agency.  The Agency is required to spend money on housing, part of a State mandated 20% housing set aside with targets for low to moderate housing included.  

But City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce have been silent about the myriad problems wrought by the Agency, not the least of which is the maven of wall-to-wall autonomous and alienating shopping malls, choking traffic, unaesthetic streetscapes and the massive debt incurred by taxpayers as a result.  The Agency has come up short on its housing mandates as well.  

Two years ago, a city-wide survey of over 400 residents was conducted and the residents took the Redevelopment Agency to task.  The respondents almost universally panned the Bay Street Mall, a major Redevelopment Agency project.  The survey revealed that the mall is not used by Emeryville residents.   The survey takers also rebuked other Redevelopment Agency projects as not in the interests of residents.

The "tax receipts" argument forwarded by cheerleaders of all the malls built by the Agency with taxpayer's money never seem to acknowledge that the malls don't just raise money for Emeryville...they are Emeryville.  This is the town we've built with the Redevelopment Agency.

The first 10 years or so of redevelopment helped eliminate legitimate blight here in Emeryville, but as under-utilized, inappropriate and unaesthetic buildings came down, the appetite for demolition was not satiated and many beautiful historically and architecturally significant buildings also fell under the wreaking ball.  What rose in their place is a net loss for livability in our town.

With the court's ruling, the redevelopment experiment has run its course and state-wide it has left cities with massive bond debt, now wholly the responsibility of the taxpayers.  Emeryville, being more than 90% made up of the Redevelopment Agency, too, is facing a mountain of debt after the 40 year redevelopment party.  In the short term, there will be a redevelopment fiscal hangover.

No More Free Money For Developers?  

Don't Bet On It!

The dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency with its Santa Claus bag of government subsidies will bring a response from those who have used it to their advantage over the years, namely the developers.  We must watch out for the inevitable cries of "Disaster!" and "The sky is falling!" from the local chambers of commerce and the greater state-wide media influenced by  right wing think tanks.  They're going to see their interests served in draconian solutions offered up in the face of the 'disaster' that will invoke some new program to somehow continue the transfer of public money into private developer's pockets.  After years of feeding at the redevelopment public trough, it's unlikely its developer beneficiaries will simply throw up their hands with a "C'est la vie, it was a nice run while it lasted".

A New Vision For Emeryville

Emeryville shouldn't sit by paralyzed, as paroxysms of change sweep over us.  We're going to have to figure out how to rebuild our town in a new way, without the Redevelopment Agency.  We already know the solution isn't to react by turning away from government as crucial to the process.  Reliance solely on the private sector might be tempting after a generation of watching local politicians engage in mutual backscratching with connected developers under the aegis of redevelopment.  Most of these made developers couldn't compete in a real free market.

Our Redevelopment Agency did do good works: the parks, the affordable housing (what little it did), the removal of toxic soil and the bolstering of our tax base by development.  The bad work includes all the stifling suburban style shopping malls and the shameless coddling of connected developers who are not interested in creating a livable town for us, the residents.  We should work to retain the Redevelopment Agency's good public policy while jettisoning the bad.

We'll probably need to start acting more as a regional player.  The recent urban density increasing Smart Growth, so much in vogue now will not likely subside owing to the rising price of fuel and our envious central Bay Area location will certainly help us.

We need to look to the past for inspiration; before the invention of redevelopment, cities did a fine job of providing public amenities.  Think of the City Beautiful movement at the turn of the 20th Century: cities across America built large and small scale public infrastructure, beautiful public edifices including train stations, libraries and parks.  We need to realize we can do this again.

The demise of redevelopment needn't be the end of development for our town and more importantly, it needn't mean the end of providing livability.  The citizens need to be vigilant against any politicians that may hold sway developer's desires for profit over our desire for building a city we want to live in.
We need to build up our city with a progressive vision and that means with the desires of the residents as the driver.  Let's get started.