I had a great time at my campaign open house — connecting with some old friends and meeting new folks. 
We displayed a couple of posters on which people entered their answers to a question worded something like “IF the city had $10.5 million to spare, how should it be spent?” The responses were diverse, but no one suggested the Crestpointe project.
A few might cost more than $10.5 million, but several listed priorities would use only a tiny fraction of that amount ($10.5 million is a lot of money!):
RETAIL & BUSINESS PROPOSALS
* Sign for Jackson Square with a list of the businesses there
* New attractive light for Jackson Square (”pay attention to this great place!”)
* Grove Center needs generic sign showing businesses
* Subsidize new local businesses in existing retail space (that got one comment of “Amen”)
* Do what’s necessary to revitalize the Mall!
* Initiate and maintain a program to encourage and expand new small businesses
EDUCATION AND ARTS
* Education! and the arts (that got one comment of “I second that”)
* Fund school budget - keep schools strong - good music program - do not go backwards
* Full funding of school system - all those unfunded mandates!
SENIOR CENTER, ETC.
* Build a new senior center and preschool
* Build or acquire senior/community center SOON (that got comments of “I second that!!!” and “I third this motion”)
OTHER LOCAL PROJECTS
* Bike lanes on all thoroughfares
* Invest in the preservation of the north tower of K-25 to jump start massive heritage tourism in the city
* Make Oak Ridge a leader in fighting global warming
* Make Oak Ridge a leader in energy-efficient homes and businesses
* Be part of a regional passenger rail system (that got a comment of “I second that”)
* Condos on ridge top (not Target), rent to city government operations as income
LAW ENFORCEMENT PROPOSALS
* More video surveillance cameras throughout the city
* More police officers
FINANCIAL PROPOSALS
* Pay down debt, borrow no more
* 5 kegs on the 18th hole and put the rest in the bank, hedge funds, and my business in order to get 6% to 8% return for schools
Oak Ridgers who want to “study up” in preparation for the upcoming June 5 election have several opportunities to do so.
Several candidates and the pro-Crestpointe group “Future of Oak Ridge” have already held campaign kick-offs or rallies, and the local AARP held a candidates forum last week. Upcoming opportunities include:
Tuesday, April 24 (that’s today) - Citizens Oak Ridge organizing meeting for the Crestpointe bond referendum, 6:30-8:30 pm, Oak Ridge Civic Center Craft Room
Friday, April 27 - Open House for Ellen Smith for City Council, 6-8 pm, Midtown Community Center (corner of Oak Ridge Tpke and Robertsville Rd). Please attend to meet me, talk about issues, and enjoy the hammered dulcimer music of Oak Ridge’s own Allen McBride. Please attend!
Tuesday, May 1 - League of Women Voters candidate forum, 6:30-9:30 pm, City Room (A-111), Roane State Community College Oak Ridge campus.
Thursday, May 3 - City Council candidate forum sponsored by Advocates for the Oak Ridge Reservation and Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning , 6:30-8:30 pm, Midtown Community Center
Tuesday, May 15 - League of Women Voters forum on Crestpointe bond referendum, Pollard Auditorium (on ORAU campus)
 Now for something completely different…
A “Thinking Blogger Award” designation (image at the right) has been spreading around the “blogosphere.” Blogger CE Petro at Thoughts of An Average Woman (a strong lady who sells herself short when she calls herself “average”) included me on her list of 5 “thinking bloggers.”
In order to mention this award here I am supposed to identify 5 more bloggers whose work I find to be thoughtful or thought-provoking. I’m not a blog addict, so I don’t carry a list of these in my back pocket, but I do visit a variety of blogs and blog-like sites from time to time that provide insightful analysis and/or thought-provoking and informative content. Not including CE Petro’s exemplary blog and omitting sites like Tennessee Politics Blog that are great news sources but light on thought-provoking analysis, here are five that I find interesting and relevant to the local community focus of this blog:
Citizen Netmom - Oak Ridge school board member Angi Agle has provided some impressive analysis and explanation on topics related to local schools and school funding, along with interesting perspectives on many other topics. She and I don’t always agree, but this entire list is about thinking, not conformity.
KnoxViews - East Tennessee is full of opinions, many of which can be found here.
Cyburbia - Not technically a blog, but a diverse and continually-updated source of interesting links and commentary about community planning and development.
Smart Growth America - A blog-like resource on “historic preservation, the environment, farmland and open space preservation, neighborhood revitalization and more.”
Appalachistan - Often-original thinking about life and local issues on the other side of the Knox County line.
This is interesting: “Community Impact Analysis, Proposed SuperTarget Store, Waconia, Minnesota” (PDF file, dated September 2006). This small town in Minnesota commissioned an independent consultant study to examine community impacts of a proposed store. They did this merely to see how the store would affect the town and local businesses; there is no suggestion that Waconia thought about paying for part of the development.
The report provides some of the kind of independent analysis that many of us think the City of Oak Ridge should do for Crestpointe, particularly since we are being asked to sink a huge amount of public money into the development.
In skimming this report I found some interesting nuggets:
– Apparently the Target Corporation is interested in building SuperTarget stores in lesser markets, contrary to the impression that many of us have gotten from their website. Waconia is much smaller than Oak Ridge, on the fringe of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. If Target Corp. is building an SuperTarget there, they might truly be serious about building one here.
 – The analysis indicates that the SuperTarget would increase the geographic extent of Waconia’s retail trade area (potentially benefiting other businesses) by pulling in customers from rural areas and small towns. It would not, however, expand the trade area on the side of town that faces Minneapolis. This is similar to the Oak Ridge situation, in that a new store here would not draw additional customers from the Knoxville side of Oak Ridge. However, a major difference is that Oak Ridge already gets retail trade from a large “hinterland” (places like Oliver Springs, Wartburg, and rural Anderson County). I estimate that Oak Ridge’s current retail trade area extends farther from the city than Waconia’s would after the new store comes in. I don’t believe that there is room for any new store or shopping center here to further expand the geographic boundaries of Oak Ridge’s trade area.
– The analysts estimate total sales for the Waconia SuperTarget at $40 million (in the year 2010). This value, which is based on an analysis of purchasing power in the trade area (unlike the City of Oak Ridge’s analysis, it is not based only on the square-foot area of stores) is noticeably less than the local promotional materials are projecting for the Crestpointe SuperTarget. (However, it appears that there are fewer people in the Waconia trade area than there are in Oak Ridge’s trade area, so maybe a SuperTarget here would have higher sales.)
– The analysts estimate that the new store would capture $12.4 million in sales that are currently going to other Target stores plus $3.3 million in sales currently going to other discount stores. It appears to me that these numbers are not representative of what might happen here, because (1) Waconia currently has no local discount stores and (2) because the Twin Cities metro area is Target’s home town with 47 area stores, many local residents shop at other Target stores in the region. Since there are two major discount stores here already, Crestpointe sales captured from other discount stores would come primarily from local stores.
– The analysts suggested that local merchants should extend their operating hours in order to compete successfully with a store like SuperTarget. (It’s clear to me that extended operating hours are one of the main reasons why big-box chain stores are typically so successful in pulling consumer sales from their locally owned competitors — for example, extended operating hours give Home Depot an important advantage over the traditional building supply stores that operate only during the day Monday through Friday.) Although many Oak Ridge stores extended their hours years ago, I suspect that some Oak Ridge retailers (both local businesses and chain stores) might be able to increase their sales (and our property taxes) with a combination of coordinated retail business promotions and good advice on matters like improved merchandising methods and expanded operating hours.
The analysis predicts that a Waconia downtown department store would close as a result of SuperTarget, but other local community impacts are expected to be fairly modest. This rosy projection is due in large part to factors present in Waconia that are not present here: the lack of existing discount stores in the city, the expectation that SuperTarget would expand the geographic boundaries of the city’s trade area, and the fact that the new store would be close to existing retail.
Consultant reports aren’t the answer to every problem, but if Oak Ridgers are being told that it is vitally necessary to spend $10.5 million on new stores, I think we deserve to be shown an independent analysis like this one to help us make an informed decision.
Residents of the South Lansing Road area got some good news* yesterday when the Board of Zoning Appeals denied an application for an exception to allow a for-profit halfway house for recovering substance abusers to continue operating in the neighborhood. This means that the second of two for-profit halfway houses in the area will have to shut down or relocate.
These halfway houses opened up illegally — the operator did not bother to try to get BZA approval before opening. Based on the number of arrests and complaints related to these establishments and their residents, it appears that the halfway-house operator also cut corners when it came to screening and supervising the residents. 
I’m very glad to hear the news that this outfit is being shut down. However, I fear that this particular bad operation may give all halfway houses a bad reputation in the community. That would be unfortunate. Properly operated halfway houses make our community a safer place, because they are an important part of the system that helps substance abusers return to being productive members of the community. This particular neighborhood has hosted a couple of well-operated not-for-profit halfway houses for many years without problems. Let’s hope they can continue that record for many years in the future.
*Also reported by The Oak Ridger on April 19th.
An article and editorial in this past week’s editions of The Oak Ridger reported that Doug Janney of the city’s Industrial Development Board (IDB) had asked the owners of Oak Ridge City Center LLC if they still wanted the $5 million in development assistance promised earlier.
These articles confused some people who remember the 2002 referendum that rejected the issuance of general obligation bonds for the City Center redevelopment project, but have forgotten the events that followed. To help refresh some memories, I’ve dug into the not-so-ancient history of the city’s agreements with Oak Ridge City Center LLC (Steve Arnsdorff and partners).
In 2003, after the referendum had failed, Doug Janney of the IDB developed a plan to aid redevelopment of the mall property without the use of general obligation bonds. The IDB proposed issuing $5 million in revenue bonds, which under Tennessee law do not involve the possibility of a referendum (unlike general obligation bonds, revenue bonds would not be backed by the full faith and credit of the city).
This was to be part of an in-lieu-of-tax arrangement in which the mall property would be deeded to the IDB (basically, a paper transaction) and redeveloped by its “real” owner. Then, instead of paying property tax to the city and county, the landowner would pay the IDB an amount equal to the tax otherwise due, and the IDB would use this in-lieu-of-tax money as a revenue stream to pay off the bonds. This was later modified (based on a recommendation by Councilman Willie Golden) so that only the taxes due on improvements to the property would be pledged toward paying off the bond.
The saga was pretty thoroughly reported in the Oak Ridger. Here are links to a partial selection of the articles about it:
Describes the proposed arrangement, Aug. 15, 2003
More on the arrangement, Aug. 15, 2003
Still more on the arrangement, Aug. 18, 2003
Article on IDB approval of the arrangement, Aug. 19, 2003.
Article reports on Arnsdorff’s agreement to the plan, Aug. 21, 2003
Article about bringing Anderson County into the conversation, Sept 4, 2003
Article about Anderson County Commission approval of the deal, Sept. 8, 2003. (Interestingly, one of the county commissioners told me this was the only time the city asked county commission to approve an in-lieu-of-tax agreement on a commercial project. In other instances, it seems the city has overtaken the county property tax without asking the county’s permission.)
Briefly explains the financial aspects of the proposed deal, Oct. 7, 2003.
Extensive information on the financial and legal aspects of the deal, provided in response to questions submitted by Councilman Leonard Abbatiello (Oct. 7, 2003)
About Councilman Golden’s proposal to modify the deal to increase property tax revenues to the city and county by giving them both the tax on the land and using only tax on the improvements to pay off the bond, Oct. 9, 2003.
Richard Cook op-ed piece on the deal, Nov. 28, 2003.
Article on Council’s vote approving the deal (they approved Golden’s modified version), Dec. 2, 2003.
Article on a progress report from Arnsdorff, March 16, 2004.
Points out that the Starbucks development counted a small part of the way toward the requirement for bringing in 50,000 square feet of businesses new to Anderson County, which was one of the criteria the city had established to qualify for the proposed bonds. (May 19, 2004)
This proposal was very controversial at the time, but when compared with the current Crestpointe proposal, the safeguards for the city in this earlier scheme look extremely solid to me (for example, in the City Center deal the IDB would title to some very high-value real estate in the center of town, but in the Crestpointe deal the IDB would have title to a smaller parcel in a problematic location). Also in hindsight, it is not clear to me that this was an exceptionally attractive deal for the mall property owner (although at the time I thought it looked good from the developer’s viewpoint).
Ironically, there was almost no public discussion later in 2004 when the city gave the IDB blanket authority to grant property tax abatements for retail developments (this authority was most notoriously used for National Fitness). See http://www.ellensmith.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22 for comments I made at the time.
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