Redevelopment: A Brief, Disjointed Essay

Just jotted this comment on another post but it seems to serve as a short, stand alone essay on Redevelopment. So we share it below:

The entire premise behind Redevelopment is that private enterprise doesn’t work – as evidenced in blight. They love to latch on to the concept of property being “under utilized” meaning that it’s not pulling its weight to generate sales tax revenue to pay for staff salaries and benefits! Rather than using code enforcement to clean up real problems they prefer to divert property tax revenue and play developer.

I’m not sure that the dead hand is a good metaphor. Judging by the unaccountable boondogglery in Fullerton over the years that has done real damage to the cityscape I’m inclined to think along the more active lines of “living dead” planning/design and “zombie” land use concepts.

I always love it when Redevelopment proponents point to the existence of pawn shops, etc. as evidence of a malfunctioning economic system. What they ignore are the cheap rents that serve as an incubator to small businesses, especially those created by young entrepreneurs. Look at the history of the SoCo abomination; Santa Fe was a “run down” street by Redevelopment standards and yet Sean Francis used an old, beat-up building shell across from an industrial use to create a vibrant business. It was later that the City tagged along and started with the lame signs and laughable paving – immediately robbing the place of any authenticity.

For some reason the Redevelopment hacklings just can’t understand the concept of business cycles and one very simple fact of business: one man’s difficulty is another man’s opportunity.