Power & Light - Shiny, Edible, City Candy

This past Tuesday I was invited to attend a commercial real estate developer's workshop focused on the plans for Kansas City's new downtown district. It is being pushed through by Cordish (just google them and the word "live" - seems like they have to add it to almost all of their projects somewhere). I was able to hear some new developments in the tax credits market and some predictions from experts on where they see it going in the next decade. Funding for development projects likes to move and change every 5-10 years just so you have to keep chasing it. It's a game the Feds and states like to play.

Anyway, the project itself is quite attractive. There will be entertainment and shopping year round, the hope being to establish the downtown as a destination site for locals and tourists alike. Having observed the airbrushed photos and simulations, I walked away a bit troubled when I thought about the big picture. Cordish has argued that they are deserving of huge tax subsidies (TIF, new markets tax credits, historical tax credits, a new one cent tax CID, and more - millions of dollars), particularly because they believe that they will bring in more money in sales tax and property tax over the next 15 - 20 years to justify it. It's a risk, but fairly like to succeed if the current administration does not abandon the downtown entirely (there's sort of a pendulum action going on due to the obsession of the last administration).

However, at the end of the day, they are basically just setting up a new distribution source for goods, services, and entertainment. The point that they argue is that it will bring more money into the city. My problem with the argument is that it assumes that the entertainment budget of the surrounding communities will increase with the advent of this new shopping experience. More likely, it will mean that money from the burbs and from other destinations like Vegas, will not receive as much $ from Midwesterners, and some of it will be redistributed to the Kansas City downtown. From a macro perspective, I do not believe there will be any true net gain, just a redistribution of disposable income.

The other major issue that I did not hear a solid answer for is where is the workforce coming from. According to Cordish, there will be 3000 new "jobs created". Well, we all know how much retail and food service jobs pay, so it is questionable if you can really call those "jobs" a benefit to the city as a whole. It's not a new industry, just more low paying jobs. Beyond that, where are they going to find 3000 people who are willing to deal with the poor public transportation, parking fees, and traffic headache to work these low paying jobs? Are people going to bus in from the inner-city areas to work at trendy restaurants? I know Cordish believes they will. I just cannot see that happening with the current routes offered by the KCATA. If the light rail (new light street car plan - there was an excellent KC Star article on it) passes, that would be about 3 years away from being completed. I do not think that Cordish can wait the three years for their workforce to appear.

All in all, I just struggle with the excitement and buzz around projects like this. It seems that these just provide a temporary anchor in cities for sales tax and property tax. The life of most retail developments is fifteen years. Hence, all the abandoned mega-malls from the 80's. In fifteen years, we'll be looking for another retail development. In the meantime, education, crime, and good land-use (curbing the sprawl) seem to be much higher priorities to the long-term life of Kansas City. What if we looked to support the growth of new businesses and industries over strategies that temporarily redistribute funds?

It seems that education and employment are the lifeblood of our body, but we continue to focus on the new shiny jewelry we saw in some other city that we want. I am not against these kinds of projects, but I struggle with the blind excitement over more retail and entertainment. I know the goal is to generate more tax revenue to use for the critical issues, but I fear that we live cycling from one retail/development tax strategy to the next. Will we ever get to the issues that make the city livable? Will we have an educated workforce and jobs for them here? If not, I don't know that creating more Uber-Gap Stores and Older than Old Navy's are the answer.