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KEVAN WILLIAMS
WHAT'S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT
Five Points
Bottle Sho
BEER j WINE ~ LIQ1
The mayor and commissioners have expressed a bit of wari
ness regarding the risk involved in the financing of something
like the proposed river district. Twenty-five million dollars is
a lot of money to wager, and while the benefits of the project
seem generally to be good for the community, there's some
skepticism about whether or not this amount of money is a
good investment, or a sure one. The best place to begin to
address this might be to look at how this project stacks up to
other efforts with which we are all too familiar.
For comparison, the government will spend about $12 mil
lion on the new parking deck, half from SPLOST and half from
meter revenues, and $23.7 million on the Classic Center expan
sion, borrowed from future SPLOST revenues. The Classic Center
expansion is forecast to create 200 jobs. Meanwhile, the river
district is forecast to create around 2,500 jobs for this com
munity, according to a feasibility study, with a $3 billion eco
nomic impact. Those 2,500 jobs, on a $25 million investment,
would be created at $10,000 apiece. We're buying those Classic
Center jobs at around $120,000 each. Assuming both sets of
jobs predictions are fairly accurate, and using job creation as
a measuring stick, the river district is a much better use of
taxpayer dollars. Even if the actual yield of river district jobs
forecast was only a third of what was predicted, it would still
be more than double what the Classic Center expansion was
supposed to bring in terms of economic development.
Speaking of the Classic Center, developers of a proposed
hotel adjacent to the convention hall claim that they'll be
building soon after the expansion is underway. Assuming that
that hotel building (located within the river district boundar
ies) is worth $15 million (comparable to the other two hotels
built downtown recently), it would reduce the river district’s
risk to taxpayers by around $5 million or so, by my conserva
tive math. Each project built within a river district tax alloca
tion district would produce an increase in property taxes that
would help pay down the bond of $25 million borrowed to
build the initial infrastructure. While the big report produced
by the Bleakly Advisory Group focuses on some more complex
versions of this sort of math, what's interesting here is how
the tax revenues produced by an essentially unaffiliated devel
opment could be captured and used as part of this economic
development effort.
What other projects might be on the horizon that would
reduce the project's riskiness? A recent proposal for a five-story
apartment building on East Broad Street across from the Jittery
Joe's Roaster, if similar in cost and scale to 909 Broad (a $17
million building) could knock another S2-3 million off that
calculation of riskiness. If all else fails with the River District,
$25 million worth of debt becomes only $20 million if two
projects of that scale are built.
Those two projects are located within the river district
boundary as initially proposed, but suppose we broaden the
definition and think of a downtown economic development
zone as a wider area, ringing our established commercial core.
Capturing the tax increase within a larger boundary would
be a less risky strategy to channel money into more tightly
constrained economic development projects within that area.
Projects proposed on West Broad or near Hotel Indigo on the
north end of downtown could contribute to a "phase one"
near the river now, with the next phase focusing on a different
catalyst project in a different part of the downtown district.
Although the vetting of the project has been a little slow
out of the gate, it's worth asking whether there might be
other, smaller projects that fit the theme but wouldn't require
the borrowing of money that the river district does. The appeal
of that site was the cluster of public property around key pri
vate parcels. Another such cluster is located along Dougherty
Street, which includes three Athens Downtown Development
Authority parking lots, low-rise offices and a fire station,
among other things. A concerted effort along that corridor
could apply the same incentives model designed to attract
offices to the river district, but without the need to build new
roads or buy much land.
With existing money, this part of town could easily be
jumpstarted in a way that out of town firms are looking for.
The area already has a world-class hotel, an art museum and
a park a block from one another. That part of town could be
marketed today; with the ADDA deck coming online, there's
no reason to retain surface parking. How
about commissioners send a memo over to
the Economic Development Foundation to
put the lots on their website and start look
ing for interested parties? In the meantime,
they'll do just fine as parking lots.
Improving the streetscape along
Dougherty, and perhaps creating a public
square as a focal point for the area, could
be another easy step toward pumping some
life into what now feels like a dead end
of town. One SPLOST project approved in
2005 that has perpetually fascinated me
is the $7.7 million for "Business Corridor
Infrastructure Improvements." As of yet,
that money hasn't been used for anything
but staff analysis. How's that coming?
Here is the project's current status,
according to the SPLOST website: "The proj
ect concept was approved by the mayor and
commission on Apr. 7, 2009. The approved
concept included a four-step methodol
ogy to be utilized for identification and
development of recommended priorities of
locations for infrastructure improvements prior to initiating
preliminary design. The implementation of the methodology
is in progress. On Apr. 6, 2010, the mayor and commission
approved the central business district corridors *or further
evaluation completing step one and step two of the concept
methodology. The mayor and commission authorized staff to
proceed with step three and step four of the concept method
ology to determine priority recommendations for infrastructure
improvements. These steps are in-progress."
This is not the way to deliver a simple and compelling
project that can contribute to economic development, as
you might expect from a project called "Business Corridor
Improvement." Basically, the objective seems to be to look
for the worst spots and patch them up. What we could really
use, if economic development is what we're after, is a big,
transformative project that serves as a catalyst for a given area
of town. Spreading that money around into isolated projects
won't produce anything with much punch. If we were to take
on something like Dougherty Street, perhaps turning that into
a tree-lined boulevard with on-street parking, it could not
only address immediate traffic concerns, but serve as an eye
catching reminder to out-of-town folks looking to invest here
that we're a town that invests in itself.
If the appetite for bigger risks isn't there yet (though it
ought to be, considering we've already hit statistical rock-
bottom in terms of poverty), we should be looking at how we
can create some smaller wins that build momentum for bigger
projects. Using existing money to tackle some low-hanging
fruit—and then capturing that success to reduce the risk of
something bigger and bolder—could be the way for an idea
like the river district to become a reality.
Kevan Williams athensnsmg@flagpole.com
Dougherty Street currently a risky proposition for pedestrians and cyclists, should be upgraded
into an attractive boulevard as part of an effort to attract businesses to repurpose city-owned
parking lots in the area
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