Core Values   

Creating Prosperity from a Community's Center

Friends,

The work of the Sonoran Institute has been built on the conviction that conservation brings not only environmental health, but also enduring economic prosperity to communities in the West. Never in our 20-year history has this message been more timely.    

 

Struggling to recover from the fallout associated with the bust of unbridled real estate speculation, cash-strapped communities are looking for new avenues for economic development. As communities contemplate paths to future prosperity, the Institute is uniquely positioned to help those communities that want to promote local economic prosperity and protect the natural resources and community values that make them distinctive.    

 

One of the qualities distinguishing the Sonoran Institute is our capacity to provide research and an understanding of conservation economics - hard numbers that give local leaders insight into the fiscal and economic impacts of their planning, development and conservation decisions. "Smart growth," with its emphasis on compact, transit-oriented, walkable cities and towns while protecting working agricultural lands and wildlife habitat, has always been a good idea for the environment. But, when you can demonstrate that it will also generate and save tax dollars, create jobs and add vitality to downtown areas, community leaders pay close attention.  

 

We recently sponsored a series of lectures and community dialogue sessions in cities around the West which offers a great example. 

 

Building up Downtown 

 

Over the past few years, we have seen evidence that communities which decided to embrace smart-growth principles and policies are weathering the recession better than others. When we learned of an economic study showing how the city of Asheville, North Carolina is reaping the rewards of investing in downtown development over big-box suburban sprawl, we commissioned the author to apply his research to several communities we are working with in the West.  

 

Joe Minicozzi is vice president of Asheville's Downtown Association and new projects director for Public Interest Projects, Inc., a for-profit real estate developer in downtown Asheville. Minicozzi's research focuses on "true cost accounting" with respect to taxation. Studying the property tax receipts of Driggs, Idaho; Sheridan, Wyoming; Bozeman and Billings, Montana; and Glenwood Springs, Colorado, he compared the cost per acre for the local government to provide services to a particular property versus the revenue per acre which that same property generates in taxes.  

 

Minicozzi concludes that investment in downtown buildings brings the greatest tax benefits to local government and also costs taxpayers less than lower density development further from the downtown's core. He shared these findings with local leaders during presentations in each of these communities. 

 

"It really turns on its head some of the conventions we have in looking at the fiscal impacts of development. In the past, communities assumed that big-box development brings in the big tax revenue potential," says Clark Anderson, our Western Colorado Legacy Program director, based in Glenwood Springs. "What Minicozzi's work shows is that compact downtown areas and mixed-use neighborhoods bring in much more value than they get credit for."  

 

As an example, Minicozzi used 2010 Garfield County property taxes to compare yield from the Denver Centre, a mixed-use building in downtown Glenwood Springs, to the Glenwood Meadows retail development outside of the city. The Denver Centre generates $44,000 in total local taxes on just one-sixth of an acre, while Glenwood Meadows generates $6.23 million on 43 acres. In other words, Glenwood Springs would need only nine acres of mixed-use buildings such as the Denver Centre in its downtown to match the total tax income of the commercial-scale development, with much less environmental impact.   

 

On top of the tax benefits, attracting additional residents, restaurants, and other businesses to its core would bring vitality and excitement to Glenwood Springs' downtown that a shopping plaza could never hope to match. 

 

The difference is like judging a car's value based on miles per tank (big-box development) versus miles-per-gallon (mixed-use downtown development), Minicozzi says. "Many communities have tended to look at real estate on a miles per tank basis. But if you look at it on a miles-per-gallon basis, all of a sudden the data on that vehicle changes." 

 

"Minicozzi's studies consistently demonstrate that downtowns bring tremendous economic benefits to the taxpayer while retaining their value as community icons, cultural centers, meeting places, and places to shop and dine," says Randy Carpenter, the Institute's associate director of the Northern Rockies Legacy Program. 

 

Signs of Progress 

 

As local leaders around the West take stock during this real estate bust and begin to put their planning and financial houses in order, we see indications that they are hearing the smart growth message.

*    In Teton County, Idaho, where 75 percent of approved home lots are vacant, the county recently adopted a pioneering "re-platting" ordinance, creating incentives for landowners to redesign defunct or incomplete subdivisions. And, for the first time ever, the county has initiated a process to vacate plats - in this case, two paper plats - with expired development agreements and no financial surety. So far, the Board of County Commissioners has vacated one of these plats, officially returning the 60-acre parcel with 19 approved building lots, to farmland.

*    Officials in Billings, Montana, are considering a plan to create a sustainable community in a mostly industrial part of the city, breathing new life into a 485-acre district that once had the highest crime rate in Billings.

*    The Missoula County Commissioners in Montana endorsed the Seeley Lake Regional Plan which maps out a thoughtful growth management plan for the area. 

*    Business leaders in Tucson, Arizona are considering a vision recognizing that their future economic prosperity is inextricably linked to protecting open space, natural resources and the outstanding recreational assets that encircle the city. 

*    In Wyoming, Sheridan County Commissioners recently enacted a Conservation Design Subdivision plan for preserving open space and the rural character of their county. This plan will help retain agricultural and rural areas, encourages clustered development patterns by using incentives to conserve open space, and promotes stewardship of natural resources.

Conservation and economic prosperity are not mutually exclusive. These are all tangible examples of counties, cities and communities resetting their priorities and their fiscal compass to ensure that they can rebound economically while integrating resource protection and the pressures of development in a way that is affordable - even profitable. In other words, in a way that is "smart."   

 

Sincerely,   

 

Luther Propst

Executive Director