Archive for November 18th, 2008

Albuquerque gets it. Albuquerque is a peer western city that has been beating us to the punch recently. They’ve been scooping businesses, working hard to keep the younger educated class and redeveloping downtown like their future depends on it..wait a minute their future DOES depend on it!

The part that jumps out to me about this post is Albq breathed life into their downtown WITHOUT a $600 million investment from a government taxing district. Groups from different backgrounds came together to get something done. The housing built downtown was affordable, in the $175k range. If you remember the myriad of downtown projects that made big splashes when they hit the local Tucson papers, they all were based on a condo selling price in the high $300k range. That cut out the student and young professionals, the very target you need to jump start a downtown. These are actually pretty good - The Post - El Mirador - Academy Lofts - A Tucson Weekly story

The Arizona Daily Star did a story on Lessons we can learn from Albuquerque, read it HERE.

Since Tucson and Albuquerque both initiated moves to revitalized moribund downtowns in 1999, Albuquerque has surged ahead in amenities, night life and residents, while Tucson remains pretty much as it was.

All this despite Tucson having $100 million Rio Nuevo tax increment financing to work with — now increased to $600 million, something Albuquerque couldn’t fall back on.

So how did Albuquerque make its big move? Five possible factors:

Think small

Downtown-redevelopment endeavors often spend big money on big projects that don’t give a “human face” and a sense of place to downtowns

Make sure the price is right

The biggest mistake condo developers make is getting “too aggressive on prices,” said Vince Garcia, president of the Blue Dot Corp., an Albuquerque condo builder.

Several developers in Albuquerque said that if they can bring in the bulk of their condos in the $175,000 to $275,000 range, they will sell quickly. Albuquerque developments priced higher than that — including the Gold Avenue Lofts and the Banque Lofts — don’t do well and are left with vacant units.

Save (and fix up) your history

Tucson often gets ripped for tearing down much of its history.

Part of Albuquerque’s resurgence has been in redeveloping existing buildings for new uses, creating a uniqueness and a sense of place for downtown.

Hooray for Hollywood

Big tax breaks given by the state of New Mexico have the movie industry booming in Albuquerque, making many young professionals really excited about the city’s downtown.

Losing bureaucratic handcuffs

Many said a huge key to sparking Albuquerque’s renaissance has been scrapping traditional zoning downtown and going to a code that regulates how buildings are constructed instead of setting rules on usage.

What’s in our way of getting Rio Nuevo?

Richard Dineen, the city’s planning director, said the department tries to do a one-stop-shop meeting with developers so they can get all their issues ironed out at once.

“You help people get their things built,” Dineen said. “They have a problem; you help them solve it.”

Good zoning should “make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard,” said Leinberger, of the Brookings Institution.

That hasn’t been the case in Tucson, where the city hasn’t been kind economically or politically to infill developers, Hein said.

He cautioned that similar zoning in Tucson would be politically difficult because of the commitment to protect the character of neighborhoods.