The District Weekly - Latest Comments in LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:42:13 -0000

Will: I can't think of one thing the RDA & DLBA have done correctly. However, let's not place blame on the entire agency. RDA can only propose projects. The City Council votes on whether or not to approve them. Ulimately, they are the ones who have to decipher if a project will be successful. Given the results, your elected officials aren't very good at making those decisions.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

wswaim — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:53:51 -0000

Juan: Another example of an RDA project gone south: Remember the downtown lasers?

http://thedistrictweekly.co...

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:54:17 -0000

The aquarium was supposed to pay for itself. That was the premise for building it with the provided financing. You're simply putting a spin on the final result. It didn't generate enough revenues, and now taxpayers are having to subsidize it. That was not the intention. Its a component, for a city that can afford a luxury item. Given Long Beach's current finanical condition, its quite obvious the Aquarium is an expense that failed to deliver on its promise.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:02:17 -0000

Well, let's see. The Aquarium and Queensway Bay/The Pike projects were supposed to attract 10 million tourists per year. Everything was supposed to pay for itself. So far, none of which has occurred. I would call that a failure. What would you call it?

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

wswaim — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:53:35 -0000

JohnB: I wouldn't be able to say whether a "majority" of RDA's projects are failures, but it's safe to name a few--I led with one in my story, the Jergins Trust fiasco. Then there's the LB Mall on Pine--which replaced a bunch of old buildings and was, in time, itself replaced by CityPlace; current RDA officials acknowledge that building a Walmart and Nordstrom Rack in the heart of a downtown you hope will attract tourists is plain weird. And Juan's not alone in his sense that a majority of projects are failures. See my citation of Suja in the story above.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:46:16 -0000

THE PIKE! CITYPLACE!

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:14:01 -0000

I base my judgments upon results. The evidence, reveals that a vast majority of Long Beach RDA projects have been financial failures.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:19:35 -0000

Reads like a redundant explanation for concluding what most of us already know;redevelopment in Long Beach has sucked.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

wswaim — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:50:55 -0000

Rgreen: Great point. Long Beach is one of the few cities that actually follows state law in sending 20% of its tax increment to subsidized housing projects. But that sort of begs the question: does that 20% produce the housing that poorer residents need? Or, as RDA critics contend, does the other 80% fuel job loss and the destruction of low-income housing?

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:42:29 -0000

It appears, that a confusing methodology was established in order to quantify whether redevelopment projects in Long Beach are good or bad. Its asinine, that there is no existing data, or cost-benefit analysis, to validate RDA projects such as Cityplace and The Pike. I do know, per the lease agreement, the developer of The Pike was to pay rent based on an ROI equation. After five years of operation, how much rent have they paid? That should be an easy question for city officials to answer.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

CA supporter — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:09:41 -0000

The debate on redevelopment cannot be complete without discussion of its role in providing for affordable housing. State law requires 20% of all redevelopment set-aside tax increments to be used in developing or preserving affordable housing. Without Redevelopment funds, this investment in under served communities, very-low and low income residents would not exist. In a city with 34% of the residents earning less than $25,000 a year and another 28% earning between $25,000 and $45.500 the need for affordable housing and investment in these neighborhoods is immense. In 2004, LB had a median income of $61k, but it’s estimated that an average family would need an annual income of $128,000 to afford an average priced ($462k) single family home in Long Beach. This is an affordability gap of $438,900 for very-low income households and $411,900 for low-income households.

The opponents of redevelopment rarely want to discuss the issues of redevelopment from the perspective of the poor, or even to acknowledge the broader policy problems resulting from the shift of local property tax revenues to state coffers under proposition 13 and the local dependence on sale tax revenue as a result. It is this local sale-tax dependency that drives the desire to attract more and more retail in redevelopment projects. If you run the pro-forma’s, you will see that the best “return on investment” for an RDA is often to invest in these corporate chains, as they will generally generate the best sale tax revenue for the city.

A policy discussion on redevelopment cannot be honest or complete without a discussion of the current benefits of redevelopment to poor communities, or discussion of alternatives to the current redevelopment-offered levels of affordable housing investment. Also required in this debate is an analysis and recognition of the contributing role played by prop-13 in creating increased local sales-tax dependency, which has contributed to the need for sales tax revenue as a primary focus of commercial RDA projects.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

wswaim — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:39:32 -0000

Juan:

Part of the challenge with return on investment is this: what's the metric? Among redevelopment's supporters, it's sales tax, but redevelopment's critics will tell you that sales tax measures only retail sales, and retail sales numbers tell a very incomplete story. For example, if you knocked down a factory with 5,000 jobs and replaced it with a Walmart, sales tax in that particular zone might rise--because factories don't sell retail and Walmart does. But the jobs would be gone, and so housing prices might decline elsewhere in the city, retail sales would follow, and etc. You get the picture.

Then there's the property tax valuation argument. If redevelopment succeeds, maybe prop taxes rise. But some studies show that cities with redevelopment agencies produce smaller gains in property values than cities without.

Having said all this, I still haven't answered your very good question directly--are there studies in LB that can tell us whether redevelopment has succeeded in producing gains?--but perhaps you can see the complexity of the question.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:42:38 -0000

Nothing of any substance. The most compelling element I recall is a report to Mayor Foster which states revenue shortages from the Pike garage are one immediate threat to the budget.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:43:34 -0000

Neither report provides any data that concludes what the R.O.I. has been for the taxpayers of Long Beach.

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

90277rulezon — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:42:06 -0000

Has there been a study to quantify the return on investment that Long Beach has received from monies spent on redevelopment projects? For example, how much rent has DDR paid for the property that currently houses The Pike? How much revenue has been generated by the parking garage?

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

wswaim — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:49:14 -0000

John B!

Keep in mind that the RDA's money is, technically, the state's money: state law allows local governments to collect money that would go otherwise to the state and counties; that means less cash for public health and education (for example) in exchange (one hopes) for an end to blight.

Collectively, the state's RDAs believe the threat is real. Here's the call to action on their website:

http://www.calredevelop.org...

Re: LIKE A HOLE IN OUR HEAD

Beachcombover — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:06:28 -0000

The elegant Jergins Trust was where the hole has now lingered for two decades. A pedestrian subway and shopping court ran under it and linked downtown to the Pike and the long-lost beach. It is an icon of redevelopment's adverse impact on the city. I have never understood the agency's mad rush to clear sites and create more eyesores, including Long Weed Boulevard.