The Urban Blog

When Comedy and Urban Policy Advocacy Meet

From The Onion Radio News on December 27, 2009:

And finally, local man Andy Willer, after carrying on about light rail for the past two decades, was given his own commuter train, and told to shut the fuck up today by City Council.  Willer was reportedly overwhelmed by the gift, but soon became disenchanted upon learning he had to assemble the whole thing himself.

What would we do without The Onion?

Seattle: The Stranger Finds the Loophole, But Proposes the Wrong Way of Closing It

Today on The Stranger’s blog SLOG, Dominic Holden proposed a course of action to resolve something that’s been afflicting Seattle in the past decade.  There, developers and real estate investors will buy old buildings downtown prior to those buildings being listed as historic.  The developer or investor at that point will order some changes to the building – usually to the building’s historic facade.  After these changes, the building will have no chance of being listed as historic, and the developer or investor can then build a skyscraper full of condos for the affluent urbanite.  Holden is ready to throw down the gauntlet and say, “Enough!”

My love for The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper(tm), is well known to the one or two people who actually read this blog regularly.  The reason I like The Stranger so much is that not only do they aggressively cover events, but they also advocate for their own opinion.  More people should be out there advocating for their opinions.  But, sometimes The Stranger is wrong.  This is one of those times.

I can’t fault Holden.  What developers have been doing is a pretty lousy trick to pull on people who want to see history preserved.  Which makes this case – this particular instance – seem absolutely absurd to use as a gauntlet case.  Let’s get into the details of the case:

In August of this year, Holden reported that a building at Eighth Avenue and Lenora Street downtown was having its “very striking terra-cotta cladding skin [which] is surprisingly intact” removed by a workman.  In August, at the time of the report, nobody from the owner of the building would claim knowledge of any plans to replace the building with a new development.

Fast forward to just recently, when the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reported the owner/investors of the property had intended to do just that.  Holden maintains that now is the time to put a stop to all this – that the development must be held up by either the City Council or the Mayor.  But I can’t help thinking there’s too much nuance in this case for it to be that simple.  Here’s why.

First – modifying the facade of a building – especially those in cities – is not something you do just willy nilly.  You need a permit.  In his original piece Holden contacted the Seattle Department of Planning and Development and found that while distasteful, the actions of the owner were perfectly legal.

Second – Holden would like to see some of downtown’s surface parking lots turned into skyscrapers first.  Wouldn’t we all!  But in our system of private property and free enterprise, a willing buyer and a willing seller are required parties to any transaction.  A few years back, I happened to catch a forum of green/infill/density builders (including Peter Steinbrueck) on TV and one of the participants joked about wishing they could turn those parking lots into something – but no dice, the little old lady in Spokane who owns this parking lot isn’t selling.  The audience laughed, but some jokes are a little too close to home.

So… even though it’s unsavory, what the developers are doing to their buildings is perfectly legal.  The proposed solution to the problem – use parking lots for this kind of stuff instead – would require powers of eminent domain no American city can hope to have.  Maybe it would benefit us to take a step back and ask a few questions.

One – if a building is in candidate status for historic preservation – can the DPD issue permits for changes to its facade?  And if so, why?

Two – what makes a building historic?  The Stranger doesn’t like cars – they have made no secret of that.  So what makes an old car dealership so historic that no more historic buildings like it may be torn down in Seattle from this point forward?  Should actual history had to have occurred in a building for it to be deemed historic?

The politically feasible solution would seem to be to make it much harder to get building permits to modify the historically significant details of any building which is a candidate for listing on the historic register.  The historic preservation people would actually have to go inside the buildings they are surveying and might be prodded to consider history as something bigger than simply the presence of some terra-cotta facadework from the 1920s.  (Though I happen to love terra-cotta facadework from history.)  And the developers would be required to prove from an engineering standpoint – if we don’t tear this facade off this building right now it’s going to fall over in the next windstorm! – that the modifications they seek to make are indeed required.

The people who are planning to put up this condo skyscraper for future Yuppies (today we’re calling them… I believe… Generation Y people), are not actually doing anything wrong, and as such don’t deserve to be punished.  If permission is denied to build their tower to “punish” them, they might decide to get religious about holding a grudge – and keep their building just up to code enough, keep the taxes current, and let the thing sit vacant and boarded up for how many unforeseen decades.

But more importantly, if we punish people who are not breaking the law then we’re setting a worse precedent yet.  We will have taken the funhouse mirror that is the US justice system – where we prosecute people for breaking laws that exist to criminalize activity that harms no one – and bent it around to where we’re also punishing people who are not breaking any laws.

It’s hard to imagine something more absurd.  Let this incident serve as the impetus for bringing about a correct and defensible solution to the problem.  Things are not nearly out of hand enough for the solution to this problem to emerge from a line drawn arbitrarily in the sand.

Seattle’s Pioneer Square Is A Mess

The growth in Seattle’s downtown areas over the past few years, even during the worst of the financial crisis, has been remarkable. Two large cities, Seattle and Bellevue, are both forests of cranes and have been for years. 

Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, which was created in an early 20th century hill-flattening, has been given over from a mix of low-slung warehouses and old residences to apartments, condominiums, and corporate headquarters.  As Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood prepares for the coming of underground light rail, increased height limits on main street Broadway Ave look to create a new urban canyon.

And yet there is one neighborhood in Seattle that simply can’t catch a break.  Pioneer Square, the original Seattle neighborhood, has been well preserved over the years but largely stagnant. 

Pioneer Square features a mix of boutiques and art galleries, a subway stop, and plenty of restaurants.  At night it is home to a considerable number of nightclubs catering almost exclusively to people from outside the neighborhood – in part because not a lot of people live in Pioneer Square.  This lack of regular residents and basic services for the residents who do live in the neighborhood creates a vacuum of the kind of workaday street life that makes a good urban neighborhood feel safe and vibrant.

One of the most famous bookstores on the west coast today, Pioneer Square’s Elliott Bay Book Company, will be moving to Capitol Hill in spring of 2010.  This, more than anything else, represents the decline of the neighborhood.  Such a close, well-connected neighborhood should not be suffering as Pioneer Square does.  Physically, Pioneer Square is in fine shape and is home to many well-maintained, beautiful buildings.

Problems frequently cited with the neighborhood center around a large homeless presence, open drug dealing, rambunctious behavior by partiers, and not enough parking.

Some more law and order certainly would help, but Pioneer Square is an old neighborhood.  It has a high concentration of homeless services.  It is adjacent to sports stadiums, and features a lot bars and nightclubs.  It already possesses a bawdy reputation going back to the turn of the century.  In short, perception can be a blessing as well as a curse.  With more of its own residents, and more visitors from in-city, Pioneer Square would be able to live beyond its reputation.

Which brings us to the main point – Pioneer Square is inconveniently located.  It is at the bottom of a hill, in a part of town without plentiful parking.  While it has a subway stop, for years before the light rail opened the tunnel closed at 7 pm and wasn’t even open on Sundays.  It would be interesting to see if more people have visited from South Seattle neighborhoods conveniently located to light rail since the line opened.  When access opens to Capitol Hill and the U-District in 2016, Pioneer Square may hit a sweet spot of being very convenient both to live and to visit for people who don’t want or need a car.

What should happen between now and then?  Probably the best thing that could happen, is for people in Seattle who care about the neighborhood to find ways to visit and patronize the businesses in daytime and early evening hours.  These are the hours when a lack of legitimate users will kill any hope a neighborhood has of feeling “normal”.  The city should get serious about putting more cops on the street with a focus on after dark hours.

Pioneer Square may also want to try non-sports related special events on summer days and evenings when no sporting events are scheduled.  Occidental Ave is a natural to be given over to street fairs, and some side streets could be narrowed, with wider sidewalks encouraging cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating.

Finding ways to bring Seattleites in regularly is what it will take to build the kind of critical mass that will keep Pioneer Square viable.  Seattle’s founding neighborhood deserves no less.

The “It’s Expensive Because It’s Dense” Canard

The ever bullish on sprawl Professor Wendell Cox likes to write articles that call out those urban areas which have enacted policies to encourage density and reduce sprawl.  A recent example is his piece The Infrastructure Canard where he unpacks the popular notion that private developers never really pay their way in terms of infrastructure costs.  The cost of providing infrastructure for far-flung developments is in fact often held up as a reason why infill development would be more cost effective.  And Cox makes a few good points.

The fact is, suburban developers frequently put in all the infrastructure of their subdivisions during the initial construction phase.  Today they are also often required to pay impact fees on top of that, and they are required to set aside land for parks, open spaces, and schools.  Debunking myths like these is a great service and I for one am thankful that Cox bothers to do it.  Which makes it all the more infuriating when he trots out his own canards, usually invoking the word “Portland” or sometimes “Seattle” or “California” to do it, that slag on dense, urban development as driving up housing costs in those areas that try it – while at the same time creating greater traffic problems and worse air pollution.

Given my 13 years of up close and personal experience with Seattle, whenever I read this kind of boneheaded nonsense, it’s always galling.  So I’d like to rebut Cox’s claim that:

Destroying Housing Affordability in the United States: In the United States, compact development polices have also increased house prices. For example, even after hitting bottom earlier this year, house prices in compact development markets such as California, Seattle and Portland remained as much as twice as expensive related to income than in less strongly regulated markets. The annual US infrastructure savings suggested in the Costs of Sprawl – 2000 are so small that they would pay less than one-third of the excess higher annual mortgage payments in California attributable to compact development (Note).

In Seattle, within city limits and within the central Puget Sound region including Seattle’s immediate suburbs, the problem that is causing higher prices is not the policies having to do with reducing sprawl.  The Seattle-Tacoma-Everett metropolitan area, home to some 4 million souls, sprawls for over 60 miles along the I-5 corridor – and sprawls for up to 20 miles eastward along various east-west highway corridors such as I-90 and SR-520.

Within this 1200 square mile metropolitan area, a variety of housing at a variety of price points can be found, suitable to just about any income.  Location, however, is a different matter entirely.

In a market, price is determined by the two competing factors, supply and demand.  The City of Seattle is about as landlocked as any city, being surrounded on nearly all sides by water.  Seattle is expensive because it is desirable.  For every expensive charming old house in a charming old neighborhood in Seattle, there are 5 houses 30 to 40 miles out of town selling for way less.  In an affluent area that makes its money on education, medical research, software development, and aircraft manufacture, it can be fairly easily shown that people who can choose based on factors other than price will choose what they desire – and old houses in old neighborhoods are desirable.

All things being equal, this would be an acceptable solution.  However, the only way in and out of most of the affordable places is via the private automobile.  Far from being an anti-automobile missive, this piece serves to remind that the history of auto-oriented development makes a pretty compelling case that as more lanes are added, more traffic congestion will emerge to fill those additional lanes.  There is a physical limit to the number of vehicles which can be moved per hour per mile of a highway lane.  Most people who drive are not driving with the intent of optimizing traffic flow, they are in a hurry and want others to get out of their way.  Gridlock is the natural result.

The reward awaiting those who shop based on price and square footage, is a legendarily long commute of hours a day wasted fuming inside an individual climate controlled box on wheels.  Were the level of subsidy for effective high capacity mass transit anywhere near equal that of highways in the Seattle area, these long commutes would be made via transit.  People would still own cars.  They would use the right tool for the job, as far as their transportation choices are concerned.  It is the regional infrastructure that suffers from suburban development, not the infrastructure of an individual development.  As people drive 30 and 40 miles one way, twice a day, 5 days a week, they impact the infrastructure of the areas they drive through – infrastructure they are not paying for.

While no fan of sprawl as a phenomenon, I have accepted that population growth and constraints on supply of more desirable in-city housing will always lead to sprawl, no matter what efforts are undertaken by governments to control it.  As the owner of a detached single family residence, I can attest to the fact that people like houses.  But house prices in old city neighborhoods are higher relative to their suburban counterparts due to desirability.  That hardly any developer is making new grid system towns which have the characteristics that will evolve into desirable old city neighborhoods over time is what is driving up prices in many metro areas.

Are urban growth boundaries the answer to the problem of sprawl?  The jury is still out on that one, but probably not.  By the same token, neither is limitless sprawl the solution to expensive housing in more desirable neighborhoods.  Sprawl that genuinely mimics the character and form of the desirable neighborhoods, and is connected to major destinations by effective transit, would seem to be the solution.

Cox is using red herrings to convince us that people actually want what is on offer from suburban developments.  A closer analysis will reveal that when people can choose based on factors that are important to them, the situation is not so cut and dried.  The reality of the situation is that people are taking what they can get – not necessarily what they want.

Reno's Neighborhoods

Note:  This post was published over two years ago, and was horribly out of date.  So it's been updated.  Reno's come a long way in two years.  This post will be featured for a while and eventually updated again.

This page breaks Reno out by neighborhoods and describes them in terms of what you will find there.  One thing that makes Reno truly great is its neighborhoods, of sufficient age and variety that they can even be broken down in terms of sub –neighborhoods.

Downtown
Downtown proper that is.  I'd say it's bounded by I-80 on the north, Liberty St on the south and by Arlington and Evans, west and east.  Downtown’s skyline is pretty visually appealing from a large number of vantage points in the city.  While it isn’t perfect, downtown is the epicenter of Reno’s ongoing efforts to improve its urban environment, and is worth a look.  If you’re staying downtown while visiting, look here for what to do when you get tired of being inside the building.

Casino District
At the north end of this part of town, you’ll find the major casino entity in Reno, which consists of Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus.  Nearby, and next to a dreadful looking block of buildings (we’re sorry, we’re working on it!) is the original Harrah’s property.  Well, not really, but for all intents and purposes, yes (the original Harrah’s casino was across the street).  For some real Reno casino experiences, visit The Little Nugget, mid-block on Virginia Street south of Commercial Row, and Club Cal Neva, which will be unmissable.  At the former, have a good cocktail from the bar.  The Little Nugget is a slot parlor and is most famous as the home of The Awful Awful, a hamburger with a convoluted enough history, suffice to say, The Little Nugget can claim the title of home.  At the latter… well, go inside.  This is what gamblin’ looked like for a long time.

WeFi
“WeFi” is the name that was given by a publicity-stirring resident of the hippest part of downtown, which is located at West and First Streets, right next to Wingfield Park and the River Walk.  Whatever you want to call it (lots of locals sneer at “WeFi” but I kinda like it), it’s a nice place to go walking around, especially in the daytime.  The merchant’s association calls it the Riverwalk District.

Not long ago, the Reno Redevelopment Agency created a Public Market on West Street between First and Second Streets in some beautiful old buildings.  While this is a nascent project, in warmer months especially the market spills out onto the street during the day and becomes a bona fide farmer’s market, toward the end of the week.  Special events also occur regularly here, and there is a great wine bar for tastings in a friendly atmosphere.

High rise housing is clustered around this area, bounded on the north by a project called Montage, a recent full scale renovation of a former casino, which as of this writing is not on the best financial footing due to the real estate bust.  A recent project right on the river called Palladio is the building with the green pitched roof.  Riverwalk, Arlington and Park Towers are all clustered around the river between Arlington and West streets, with Park Tower on the south bank of the Truckee.

East Fourth Street
This is Reno's classic strip o' bars at night.  There are a number of long neglected buildings here just begging for someone to come use them for something modern.  At the same time, there is work that needs to be done in this area as well if it is to be really worthy of investment.  The streetscape is due for improvement.

East Fourth Street does have its afforementioned nightlife.  Nightlife institutions like Lincoln Lounge, Club Underground, Davidson’s Distillery, Abby’s Old Highway 40, Treehouse Lounge, and Studio on 4th play host to a variety of events – everything from bikers to all ages open mic nights.

Also on East Fourth Street is Louis’ Basque Corner, and Casale’s Halfway Club restaurant – which is not a halfway house, but rather is halfway between Reno and Sparks.  Or something.  Classic American kitchen Italian.  Basque food in Reno is legendary.

Ballpark District
In Fall of 2007, something local leaders had been hoping and praying would happen finally happened.

A few years before that, a surcharge on rental cars was begun, and that money pooled into an account, to be used for the construction of a true AAA Minor League baseball stadium in Reno to accommodate a team – which needed to be found.

Some businessmen from out of town appeared with access to money, and those businessmen managed, in the span of a little over a year, to clear several buildings, including Reno’s main fire station, off a plot of land on the east side of downtown, and raised up a beautiful minor league ballpark, bought and relocated a team and had butts in seats cheering like crazy by Spring, 2009, for the inaugural season of the Reno Aces.  Lake and First is a good place to start.

Good thing, too, because this part of downtown was looking pretty rough.  A landmark building had burned down, and so a once vibrant part of town had been reduced to a bunch of empty lots.  Those empty lots are filling up again.  As of this writing, construction is underway on the second phase of the ballpark project, to include an entertainment complex, as well as a new transit center for downtown.

This district is also home to Santa Fe Hotel, another of Reno’s classic Basque restaurants.  I’ll leave it to you to choose a favorite.

Conclusion
More investment is needed in the downtown area to unlock its full potential, but it’s already a lot of fun – and shows one way that Reno is truly The Biggest Little City.

Midtown
People in Reno can sometimes be a little skeptical when people try to call their neighborhood something fancy.  But one name that seems to have caught on with people is Midtown.  Midtown refers to the area of town between Plumb Lane to the south, and Liberty Street to the north, just south of downtown.  It’s truly a descriptive name, so that’s probably why people like it.

Midtown has two distinct neighborhoods hanging off of it, that share great common features, but are distinct in their own right.  The two main streets of Midtown are South Virginia Street and Wells Ave.

Wells Ave
My original, and current, Reno home.  This strip of mostly commercial development punctuated by old houses and the odd apartment building is an old main street and recently underwent a community driven renovation.  The road was narrowed and bike lanes were added.  Street furniture, landscaping, and decorative lighting were installed, and public art was installed.

Wells Ave has become home to a considerable number of Latino businesses over the past several years.  It’s also home to some great old bars, and an old bank (today a US Bank) that was once a church.  While not necessarily a great pedestrian destination for tourists (the businesses are very neighborhood oriented), nonetheless south of Stewart Street, it’s pleasant to look at and has great views of the whole city and the mountains.

South Virginia Street
This is the stretch of South Virginia, Reno’s definite main street, bounded by Plumb Lane on the south and Liberty St on the north.  This is where the zany antique malls, adult boutiques, cutting edge design studios, thrift shops, bars, nightclubs (including a gay bar), ethnic restaurants, and more other food options than I can recount, all seem to happily coexist.

South Virginia Street is in line to be rehab’ed in something called the Complete Street Project.  South Virginia is home to Reno’s high capacity, high frequency BRT bus line RTC RAPID, and by November of 2010 it is expected that BRT stations, with level boarding platforms, will exist on Virginia, and streetscape improvements will have begun.

Today, South Virginia Street is a desolate place for pedestrians.  Sidewalks in some places are about 2 feet wide.  Yet it is undeniably urban, and undeniably:  if you like cities and the kinds of funky yet safe things cities tend to have among their accoutrements, you will like this street.

University
The area around the University of Nevada, Reno, is an old residential neighborhood.  UNR, as the locals call it, is also referred to as Nevada in NCAA sports.

The UNR campus is a great place to walk around, and if you don’t mind living in a neighborhood full of college students, you could do worse than to live in the neighborhood on the hill to the west of the university.

Old Southwest
Driving through the leafy streets of Reno’s Old Southwest, it’s easy to imagine living there.  The would be resident will be limited by the size of the pocketbook, however.  It’s going to be really important here.  A few main streets of this neighborhood are Plumas Street, Arlington Ave, and Mt Rose Street.  The Old Southwest is the residential part of Reno with the most charming houses, mansions built when your grandparents were kids (around Newlands Circle on California Ave), leafy streets and interestingly enough, largely not a lot of pretense about the whole affair.  Along the eastern edge, the border with Midtown, owners turn to tenants, a few apartment buildings emerge here and there.

California Avenue
The merchants like to call this street “CalAve” – and this is another designation that locals frequently sneer at.  You can just say “on California” and people will know what you’re talking about.  California Avenue is an edge between downtown and Old Southwest – and is a district main street of both but more closely resembles the latter.

On California you’ll find boutiques and great places to have lunch, a nightlife institution called Biggest Little City Club, as well as the marvelous St James Infirmary, and provided you’re not too late in the evening, The Chocolate Bar.

California is also located adjacent to two Reno institutions you need to know about:  Peg’s Glorified Ham ‘n Eggs (Sierra and Liberty), what might possibly be the best breakfast you can get at a restaurant, and Nevada Museum of Art (Liberty and Flint), a Will Bruder designed building opened in 2003 as the new home of an institution, the state’s only accredited art museum, which has been going for decades.

Idlewild Park
It’s worth taking a brief moment to acknowledge the wonderful Idlewild Park.  This park is the confluence of western downtown (not covered here yet), and Old Southwest charm.  From Wingfield Park downtown, head toward the green mountains (the Sierra) along Riverside Drive, cross the river at Booth Street, and follow the signs to Idlewild Park.  This is a great walk just about any day of the year.

Conclusion
There’s a lot more of Reno to cover on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.  But so many of the charms of the community are laid out here, that if you’re in search of what makes Reno Reno, you’ll hopefully find them with this guide.  Good luck in the Biggest Little City.

In Reno, a Streetcar, No Wait, Light Rail? Plan is Not a Transit Plan

In Reno, news has been out for a while now about a plan to convert the soon to be implemented Virginia Street BRT (or bus rapid transit for you non wonks) service to streetcar, and eventually a light rail system.  This blog has remained silent on the subject thus far because the whole effort is part great idea, part hastily conceived notion.  The project’s costs would come in the form of a property tax increase, which doesn’t feel too promising to pass at the ballot box, which it would be required to do.

I am personally very interested in the idea of establishing rail transit in the Reno area, and I pay property taxes in Reno.  I would vote to raise my own taxes to pay for transit related improvements.  However, one of the things about this current proposal that is worrisome is that it is so ill defined, it could end up a flash in the pan and any future effort would be tainted by it.

So it is with that background that I have been looking at this thing, and when I look at things, I tend to try to find areas where they can be improved.  Here’s what the Reno plan is missing.

One thing that is missing is a long-range plan.  RTC needs to produce maps and conceptual renderings of not just what the vehicles or station facilities would look like but rather what areas are being served over the long term.  The plan to lay track and run streetcars and eventually, if voters will approve it, light rail, is shortsighted thinking.

Washoe RTC’s Proposed Primary Transit Network [Source]

Any plan put before voters needs to show how that plan has positive long-term implications for the regional transit network.  The different types of transit vehicles and their infrastructure have different uses in the regional and local contexts.

For example, a city-level streetcar network should be conceived as joining close-in neighborhoods to downtowns and other regional centers.  A regional light rail system connects farther flung destinations along greater distances.  In this model, proposed light rail would have a focus on connecting the far south end of the corridor, at Mt Rose Highway, with the north end of the corridor, in Stead.  (Instead of what?  You ask.  Hooray for you!  You’re still reading.)

 
A light rail corridor

It might be said about this light rail corridor, in the planning meetings where nearby citizens show up and say what they think, that it should be largely grade-separated, and that trains should come no less frequently than every 15 minutes.

Streetcars, on the other hand, would be used to knit together the urban fabric.

   
A streetcar network

Such a streetcar network could serve as the impetus for streetscape redesign projects, and naturally would feed into the idea of making the city more connected to downtown and making parts of the city feel more connected to one another.  The residents might say that they want streetcars to run at no greater than 20 minute intervals most of the day, on most days.

Politically, a transit plan composed of such elements would benefit more than 144,000 residents in 4 area ZIP codes.  That is over half the residents of Reno.  A plan that shows them where their money is being spent and how it benefits them will have a much better chance at the ballot box.