Paul Berg
2007-08-30 15:17:26 UTC
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News article from The (Portland) Oregonian
Imagine squeezing a park the size of Eastmoreland Golf Course in
downtown Portland.
If the city followed its rules for calculating such things, the new
housing sprouting up in central Portland would require adding 150 acres
of new parks downtown
"That didn't pass the smell test," says Riley Whitcomb, manager of the
Bureau of Parks & Recreation system development charge program.
Policies for determining the need for new parks and who pays for them,
adopted before anyone predicted the development explosion in the Pearl,
River District, South Waterfront and elsewhere in the city, clearly need
updating.
But it won't be easy.
A task force appointed by Commissioner Dan Saltzman a year ago is slated
to make a recommendation today that could include doubling the existing
system development charges for new housing and creating a new
per-employee charge for commercial and industrial development.
Or maybe not.
Saltzman expects to get some pushback from the business community,
particularly home builders. He hopes to bring the issue to the City
Council in November.
Bev Bookin, who represents commercial real estate interests on the task
force, says business groups are working to make the proposal as
palatable as possible before deciding whether to oppose it.
Whitcomb says he's searching for that bureaucratic "sweet spot" between
fairness and effectiveness, boosting the fees high enough to do some
good without generating a fatal level of opposition.
Developers currently pay $3,117 for each new single family home and
$2,027 per multifamily unit in parks system development charges.
Commercial developers pay nothing.
Whitcomb estimates that the charges cover about 15 percent of the cost
of buying land and developing new parks. Because state law forbids SDCs
to be used to make up existing deficiencies, the park system keeps
falling farther behind.
At the core of the growth issue is a tension between the idea that
newcomers should pay for the schools, streets and parks that their
presence requires and the notion that costs should be spread broadly
across the general public since everyone benefits from new services.
Forcing development to pay for itself makes the most sense in developing
suburban areas where it's relatively simple to impose fees as
subdivisions spread across an empty landscape.
It's not so simple in a built-out city such as Portland where virtually
all development is scattered infill or high-rise condos.
Given the sharp rise in population in the central city, the Parks Bureau
proposes creating a separate, higher set of fees there.
The Parks Bureau estimates that growth by 2020 will produce a need for
1,402 acres of parkland and 507 acres of developed parks.
If development charges were to pay the full cost, the fee would rise to
$14,652 per home in the central city. Officials have dropped that
option.
A formula that recovers 70 percent of the cost of buying land for
neighborhood parks and trails, but only 30 percent of nature parks,
would produce rates that are about twice current ones.
Whitcomb said he plans to present even lower fees options at today's
task force meeting.
So, what about that 150-acre park downtown?
The Parks Bureau proposes to solve that problem by assuming that places
such as the Park Blocks and Tom McCall Waterfront Park function as
neighborhood parks for downtown residents part of the time.
That brings the 150-acre figure down to about 30 acres of new parks:
"Hard, but not totally impossible," Whitcomb says.
The math is brutal. Downtown land is scarce and expensive. Buying land
for a 6-acre park would cost about $24 million -- the total amount
produced by the existing charges since established in 1998.
Officials propose extending the fee to non-residential development
because workers who live outside the city use city parks during lunch
hour or before and after work. This is particularly true for downtown
office workers.
In 1999, business opposition forced former Commissioner Jim Francesconi
to abandon a plan to create a nonresidential systems development charge.
Opponents said the city failed to show a connection between workers and
the need for more parks, as required by state law. The issue has not
been tested in the courts.
The Oregon Court of Appeals cleared up the legal uncertainty in 2003
when it upheld Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District's charge in a
suit brought by the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland.
Without the legal leverage, opponents must use political arguments, such
as the risk of boosting housing costs when the region is promoting
infill and compact development.
"You can't have a set of policies on one hand that says, thou shalt
build at certain densities, and then make the cost so prohibitive the
market won't do it," Bookin says.
"It's a tricky business. I appreciate the dilemma the city is in."
~
News article from The (Portland) Oregonian
Imagine squeezing a park the size of Eastmoreland Golf Course in
downtown Portland.
If the city followed its rules for calculating such things, the new
housing sprouting up in central Portland would require adding 150 acres
of new parks downtown
"That didn't pass the smell test," says Riley Whitcomb, manager of the
Bureau of Parks & Recreation system development charge program.
Policies for determining the need for new parks and who pays for them,
adopted before anyone predicted the development explosion in the Pearl,
River District, South Waterfront and elsewhere in the city, clearly need
updating.
But it won't be easy.
A task force appointed by Commissioner Dan Saltzman a year ago is slated
to make a recommendation today that could include doubling the existing
system development charges for new housing and creating a new
per-employee charge for commercial and industrial development.
Or maybe not.
Saltzman expects to get some pushback from the business community,
particularly home builders. He hopes to bring the issue to the City
Council in November.
Bev Bookin, who represents commercial real estate interests on the task
force, says business groups are working to make the proposal as
palatable as possible before deciding whether to oppose it.
Whitcomb says he's searching for that bureaucratic "sweet spot" between
fairness and effectiveness, boosting the fees high enough to do some
good without generating a fatal level of opposition.
Developers currently pay $3,117 for each new single family home and
$2,027 per multifamily unit in parks system development charges.
Commercial developers pay nothing.
Whitcomb estimates that the charges cover about 15 percent of the cost
of buying land and developing new parks. Because state law forbids SDCs
to be used to make up existing deficiencies, the park system keeps
falling farther behind.
At the core of the growth issue is a tension between the idea that
newcomers should pay for the schools, streets and parks that their
presence requires and the notion that costs should be spread broadly
across the general public since everyone benefits from new services.
Forcing development to pay for itself makes the most sense in developing
suburban areas where it's relatively simple to impose fees as
subdivisions spread across an empty landscape.
It's not so simple in a built-out city such as Portland where virtually
all development is scattered infill or high-rise condos.
Given the sharp rise in population in the central city, the Parks Bureau
proposes creating a separate, higher set of fees there.
The Parks Bureau estimates that growth by 2020 will produce a need for
1,402 acres of parkland and 507 acres of developed parks.
If development charges were to pay the full cost, the fee would rise to
$14,652 per home in the central city. Officials have dropped that
option.
A formula that recovers 70 percent of the cost of buying land for
neighborhood parks and trails, but only 30 percent of nature parks,
would produce rates that are about twice current ones.
Whitcomb said he plans to present even lower fees options at today's
task force meeting.
So, what about that 150-acre park downtown?
The Parks Bureau proposes to solve that problem by assuming that places
such as the Park Blocks and Tom McCall Waterfront Park function as
neighborhood parks for downtown residents part of the time.
That brings the 150-acre figure down to about 30 acres of new parks:
"Hard, but not totally impossible," Whitcomb says.
The math is brutal. Downtown land is scarce and expensive. Buying land
for a 6-acre park would cost about $24 million -- the total amount
produced by the existing charges since established in 1998.
Officials propose extending the fee to non-residential development
because workers who live outside the city use city parks during lunch
hour or before and after work. This is particularly true for downtown
office workers.
In 1999, business opposition forced former Commissioner Jim Francesconi
to abandon a plan to create a nonresidential systems development charge.
Opponents said the city failed to show a connection between workers and
the need for more parks, as required by state law. The issue has not
been tested in the courts.
The Oregon Court of Appeals cleared up the legal uncertainty in 2003
when it upheld Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District's charge in a
suit brought by the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland.
Without the legal leverage, opponents must use political arguments, such
as the risk of boosting housing costs when the region is promoting
infill and compact development.
"You can't have a set of policies on one hand that says, thou shalt
build at certain densities, and then make the cost so prohibitive the
market won't do it," Bookin says.
"It's a tricky business. I appreciate the dilemma the city is in."
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