This is a four year-old picture, but nothing has changed. Located across from the Northwestern Mutual campus on 27th and Drexel; 1.200 employees headquartered across the street(!) couldn't keep a restaurant in business here.
Communities can be shaped by choice, or they can be shaped by chance. We can keep on accepting the kind of communities we get, or we can start creating the kind of communities we want.
— Richard Moe, National Trust for Historic Preservation
After enduring fairly alarming comments by fellow commissioners at Thursday's meeting, I'm compelled to prepare a presentation for the next gathering of the Economic Development Commission on how principles of Smart Growth drive economic development and sustainability.
Our discussion -- held with three members absent -- regarded possible incentives for developers wanting to build in Franklin. I am generally against subsidies; however, I brought up the idea of offering certain incentives in exchange for "placemaking" considerations by a potential builder or developer. Locating in the City Civic Center district, for instance, rather than out on the outskirts of town; adding neighborhood-access amenities; creating an innovative site plan; revitalizing an empty property; etc.
More than one of my fellow commissioners disagreed out of hand, riffing on the "Business will tell you where it wants to go" mantra. In other words, Let the chips fall where they may; let developers build where and how they see fit.
And how's that worked for us so far?
Well, Franklin's unofficial motto remains "there's no 'there' there." So much for a "sense of place."
The city budget shortfall, strained by the demands of sprawled infrastructure, requires service cut after service cut - including possible public safety cutbacks.
We have a newish movie theater complex built out in the middle of a cornfield in proximity to... nothing. Go catch a flick - then get back in your car.
The city is dotted with roads that end with no rhyme or reason. "We're waiting for a developer to eventually ..."
We've allowed a regionally-owned grocer (Wyndham Village Sendik's) to be driven out of business in under a year.
There is no "support local businesses" initiative in place.
The former Sentry grocery store, a huge building, is vacant. Walgreens next door is threatening to tear it down to facilitate a drive-thru window.
Children who live less than the length of a football field away from Pleasant View Elementary have to take a bus to a building they can see from their back yard. The school is nearly 50 years old, and the problem has yet to be solved.
Franklin is home to a single coffee shop, Moondance (with great food, by the way), which is unfortunately located on 27th street rather than "inside" the city.
Franklin's single "inside the city" local coffee shop and meeting space, 5-Star, remains vacant next to an also-vacant martini bar in a brand new building.
The "City Civic Center" is devoid of any manner of "third place" development that would augment and invigorate the Public Library and/or spur further investment there. (I had to actually debate my fellow commissioners in order to simply pass a motion, at the mayor's request, recommending that the city consider a vacant site next to the library for a coffee shop/co-working facility concept I'd advocated. Even though the concept originated in the EDC (via me), there was still one "nay" vote and an attempt by a commissioner to add a superfluous "spend no money on this" amendment to a mere recommendation to the council motion!)
And on and on ...
The simple truth regarding "business will tell you where it wants to go" is that any land a developer happens to own or have access to is always the best place to build, as far as the developer is concerned (see Shoppes at Wyndham Village). The developer then hires a site consultant to work backwards from the fait accompli.
That's why we have a movie theater in the middle of a corn field, and why we had two Sendik's grocery stores within spitting distance of each other.
And why, in Franklin, we have none of the multi-use public space amenities and "third places" that are on the wish lists of home buyers and businesses looking to take root.
In their well-regarded book on local economic development, Planning Local Economic Development: Theory and Practice, authors Edward Blakely and Ted Bradshaw note that “industry and business regard livability as an important locational factor.” and that local governments need to “identify their quality of life attributes, build on them and effectively promote them to the business community.” *
That means "incentivising" developers to think outside their strip-mall comfort zone (again, see Shoppes at Wyndham Village) so they'll work with the city to create inspiring, interconnected places and spaces that will, in turn, attract further investment. That's how you strengthen the tax base and lower your citizens' property taxes.
The current economy places great value, for instance, on proximity and clustering. Placing jobs, homes, shops and recreation in walkable proximity increases business opportunities, helps create a much-needed sense of place, and can attract talented workers.*
Failing to invest in acknowledged quality of life attributes like walkability and placemaking can have dire consequences for a local, state or regional economy. In 2003, for example, the Brookings Institution found that Pennsylvania’s land development practices -- which, like Franklin's, had the effect of decentralizing growth and ignoring community-building -- contributed to the state’s loss of young people and its subsequent job and wage stagnation.*
The laissez-faire approach has been tried, and it failed. Time to be proactive.
* [See http://www.iedconline.org/ for the report, Economic Development and Smart Growth]
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