Archive for November 5th, 2008

 Second in our series comparing Pima County other communities around the county. See the El Paso Downtown redevelopment post HERE.

 

Read the INC magazine article HERE.

But if mayors agree that inner cities deserve saving, they don’t necessarily agree on how to save them. Predictably, most fund a variety of business-development programs: tax breaks for businesses, low-interest loans, and the like. Beyond the basics, however, their strategies diverge:

• In Indianapolis, former mayor Stephen Goldsmith cleaned up parcels of brown-field land adjacent to the interstate highways that bisect the city and then personally recruited businesspeople to locate new companies there.
• In Charleston, S.C., Mayor Joe Riley heavily promotes tourism and uses the proceeds from a hotel tax to fund housing and minority-business-loan programs.
• In Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Kay Barnes is upgrading inner-city housing stock, betting that good, affordable residences will attract people who in turn will attract businesses.
• In Los Angeles, Mayor Richard Riordan is working with the large immigrant population to encourage start-ups in the city’s burgeoning garment district.

Austin

Mayor: Kirk Watson (D)

First term: 1997 - present

The emphasis: Austin wants to populate its inner city with small businesses, large tech companies, and even academic institutions drawn from other parts of the city and region.

The programs: The Austin Revitalization Authority (ARA) is spending $86 million through 2005 to redevelop and stabilize the city’s most distressed district, in the central part of East Austin, starting with the construction of a 40,000-square-foot retail and office complex. The city has qualified much of that area for federal loans, in hopes of encouraging indigenous businesses to remain there and expand, and outside businesses to relocate there or expand into the area. Other betterment initiatives include beautification, the demolition of derelict buildings, historic preservation, home construction, and storm-water drainage. In addition, the ARA is trying to attract restaurants and clubs to the area in order to create the vibrant nightlife young professionals look for.

A fiber-optic cable already runs through the neighborhood, and the city is negotiating with three companies to provide Internet access to every building in East Austin. That may help Austin capitalize on its growing reputation as a technology center: the ARA has sent out feelers to Dell, Samsung, and Microsoft about locating offices in the area. Another prospect is the incubator of the University of Texas. “I’d say we have a 50-50 chance of getting them,” says Byron Marshall, interim executive director of the ARA. “If we do, we might be able to get the start-ups spun out of the incubator to stay here as well.”

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“People are starting to realize that East Austin has become an economic engine.”

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The mayor says: When Watson was elected mayor, he named East Austin his first priority. But local politics stymied his efforts on behalf of that area. Meanwhile, private investment in the city’s burgeoning downtown rapidly eclipsed inner-city projects. Now Watson believes interest in East Austin is picking up. “It’s becoming much easier to recruit business to East Austin,” he says. “I get people contacting me all the time about this. It’s not so much ‘What can the city do for me?’ as ‘This looks like an area of exciting opportunity.’ People are starting to realize that an area that appeared not to be a potential economic engine — well, now it is.”

Supporters say: Bob Foster’s Equix Advisory Corp. has refurbished three East Austin buildings for new tenants: an advertising agency and two high-tech companies. Tech companies are easily wooed, he says, by the neighborhood atmosphere, the cheap space, and the bandwidth. And while Foster hasn’t used any of the ARA incentives, he has on several occasions asked for Watson’s aid in cutting through the development bureaucracy. “The mayor’s been a dynamo,” Foster says. “The development process can only be described as a meat grinder. In the 1960s and 1970s a fabric of ‘antigrowth good intentions’ was woven into the system that makes doing anything — good or bad — very difficult. The mayor is willing to get right in the middle of a bureaucratic muddle — to wade right in and say no to people. He’s been really, really aggressive.”

Skeptics say: City Councilman Gus Garcia, an East Austin representative for nine years, says that the city council hasn’t done enough to help private investment in the inner city catch up with that of the downtown. “East of Interstate 35 is not where the emphasis is,” Garcia says. “All the development has been downtown, and the distressed neighborhoods are still distressed. The city has dedicated small amounts of money to distressed areas, but there hasn’t been a capital injection by the private sector. This mayor has moved more things than the others. And the city has gone in to help neighborhoods to develop a good plan. But the neighborhood plans are relatively new, and they need implementation strategies.”

The last hurrah: With five years left in the first phase of ARA’s grand plan for East Austin (a second phase will last through 2013), Watson’s legacy as an inner-city reformer has yet to be written.

Mike Hofman is a staff writer at Inc.

Austin (Travis County) versus Pima County

	Pima County		Travis County     Austin 2006
Total Population	1,003,235		921,006
Unincorporated Population Served*	352,105		166,087
Cities/Towns in County	5		27
Percentage unicorporated	36%		18%
County Budget/Person	$1,365		$719
County Annual Budget	$1.48b		$663 m
Property Tax Rate Per $100	$4.66		$2.52
Employees per 10k population	8.3		2.03
Total County Property Roll	72.1 billion		84.8 billion
Median Home Price	$244,000		$243,800