Yesterday in the Inquirer, Harris Steinberg, the executive director of PennPraxis and the guy who led the year-long public planning process for the Central Delaware Advisory Group, praised the appointment of Andy Altman as Mayor Nutter's deputy mayor for planning and economic development AND commerce director.
Steinberg's praise, while he acknowledges Altman as a "veteran planner" is more directed that the decision to combine, in one person, the roles of "physical planning and economic growth." As you can see from the flow chart I referred to in the previous post, and as Steinberg points out, Altman will be in charge of "commerce, zoning, historical, art, housing, licenses and inspections, and more."
It would be easy to defer to Steinberg, who you may remember from our Issues Forum video about the Casinos and Waterfront Development, and agree that this move is indeed a good thing. But it seems to me that accepting that is a bit of a leap of faith and really depends on Mr. Altman's commitment to solid planning and getting the city away from the "economic development at all costs" strategy that it has employed for the past generation or so.
That is a concern shared by at least some other folks who are concerned with city planning and the city's physical development - a term, I've been taught, is very distinct from the city's economic development.
A recent conversation I had with a frequent reader of this blog - and someone whose opinion on the issue of city planning I respect - told me that the planning community has responded to this appointment with some trepidation. Again, the problem is by no means with Mr. Altman. In fact, my source agrees that Altman "is the best" and "a superstar that world" of physical planning and development. He went on to say that "it's amazing that we got him here."
No, the problem is precisely with what Steinberg says was a good idea, combining the role of Commerce Director with this authority over planning. In fact, there are very few examples in other major cities of planning being combined with economic development.
(Sidebar: As I understand it, planning is concerned with the "physical development" of the city: ie the actual buildings that are built, where they are build, where the streets go, where the parks are, how high the buildings are, how far back from the sidewalk they are and what kinds of building uses can go in which locations. Economic development is concerned with bringing in businesses that provide jobs, either by encouraging existing businesses to move here or non-existent businesses to start here.)
Aside from some small cities, Washington D.C. is the only example of a major city that combines planning and economic development. In fact, they have an actual Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development - the exact same position created by Nutter. In most other major cities, the function of Planning takes precedence while economic development has a lesser role.
Planning has long taken a back seat here in Philadelphia as Steinberg points out in his piece:
The mantra was that any development was good development - a sign of both desperation and lack of sophistication. We got away with it because, by charter, city planning in Philadelphia is only advisory to the mayor and council, with no jurisdictional power.
Contrast this to Chicago where "the current 18 [Plan] commission members are appointed by the mayor and must approve, disapprove or defer any proposal by a public body or agency 'to acquire, dispose, or change any real property within the territorial limits of the city' on the basis of whether or not the referral complies with the city's long range planning goals and objectives."
Another example is New York, which has a planning department but no commerce department.
Ultimately, though, the problem with this position is that Altman, as a deputy mayor of planning and economic development, should be in charge of "coordinating" the functions of the various departments that report to him. However, since he is also the Commerce Director, he's in charge of one of those very departments.
It may have been better if a separate person had been given the Commerce Director job and Altman could focus on keeping the lines of communication between planning and commerce. Since Nutter is in the process of separating the Commerce Director and City Representative positions into two separate positions, Commerce would no longer even be a charter-mandated cabinet position. The charter specifically says the City Representative shall be on the cabinet. Altman could still serve as Deputy Mayor and on the cabinet without having to be the Commerce Director.
What happens when an economic development opportunity comes along that could bring thousands of jobs to the city but the business wants to build in a place where its presence doesn't fit with the fabric of the neighborhood or the long range plan for that area? Which part of Altman's dual role will take precedence?
Steinberg seems to think it'll be the "planning part." Other planners, as I've heard in some of my conversations, are taking a wait-and-see approach. Regardless of how this plays out, with the rewriting of the zoning code, the development of new comprehensive city plan, the constant tension between new building and historical preservation, and the recent unveiling of a new plan for the central Delaware waterfront, Altman is going to have his hands full.
Comments (11)
Sounds a little like sour grapes on Steinberg's part, since he obviously wants to be head of Planning in Philadelphia.
Posted by anonymous | February 1, 2008 7:17 PM
Okay so as I read the flow charts.... IT seems to me that Governement has gotten big instead of Smarter???
The MD is over everyone, but the report to the Mayor, the chief of staff, and the MD???
This is confusing....
Posted by Anonymous | February 2, 2008 1:57 PM
Philly's government really is too big. It's not a democratic plot to create big government as Harrisburg likes to say. It really is just a new mayor and administration coming in and being afraid to consolidate, to eliminate, to clean house.
But that is how we have multiple agencies working on housing and city property disposal as more and more development unfinished from previous administrations gets left behind. Then those MDs and DMs are not around to ask what happened to all that federal/state block grant money?
The new Mayor's people have to have the authority to make sweeping decisions, from selling property that the city owns or controls to the highest bidder, to letting go of many staffers from pet theory projects of the previous decades. OHCD comes to mind. You have one MD doing homelessness and housing, and one MD doing housing and community development, and then a separate fiefdom each in the PIDC/PAID bloated bureacracy (see how much property it holds that owes property taxes to get an idea of their turnaround) and the even more behind RDA, a kind of unaccountable, closed badly performing land bank that keeps taxable property out of the hands of owners who want the property who would pay.
The cross purposes of the agencies do one type of thing very well -- kill equity in neighborhoods, degrade and delay private interest and capital, increasing costs to the city that owners would pay themselves if only permitted once again to buy this RDA property. Plus, the RDA is the top property tax delinquent "owner" since it holds so much property for years, decades even, that the private market wants but that the RDA does nothing with.
No member wants to go in and clean up after the mess someone else made.
But the city depends on it. Being hog tied by a bureaucracy that was never designed to perform, but just layered on top of unfinished business means Philly is flummoxed to capitalize on the revenue potential these managing directors are supposed to be creating.
My advice: collect the overdue property tax of over $527 million to $700 million (by Mark McDonald's estimate) and auction off city controlled property to the highest bidder. The remnants not sold can then be the focus of a leaner mayor's office for planning and economic development.
What checks this? The new zoning code upgrades and ethics reform.
Philly has to be less worried about the imprint of private business, of which it has little, and more excited about the reality that if we need jobs and housing, we better let the private market/private ownership do as much as it can before we try to do it for them and fail, leaving the next administration to clean up after us.
Nutter and his team could be the Obama that wins the election if they are prepared to allow the private market to work again in Philly in an open, transparent fashion that doesn't require ramming an idea past local government just to jump start some development, any development after years of pay to play and a totally dead waterfront.
London cried about the "Gherkin," now who can imagine London without it? We need pedestrian bridges, a waterfront destination, all these things that cities like London did years ago. Did they do it by restricting leadership, or by freeing it?
We got box stores during the era of closed deals and pay to play. The lack of openness and transparency is what led to bad planning/development. Now we have the chance to let good ideas compete, and the best talent to build.
Previously it was the mediocre builders/owners with the least issues with bribery and graft that won (or thought they might) the chance to shape Philly. Now those guys are in prison.
Posted by Anonymous | February 4, 2008 6:18 AM
Our new zoning code allows for planning considerations to be involved in a good faith process. Ethics reform checks in part the conflict of planning with commerce.
Right now Philly simply holds miles of old factories that it owns, or some city or quasi city agency holds. Nothing happens.
Planning AND commerce never enter into it under the old organizational chart.
Like the Red Bell Brewery. A vacant building on the R7 line you can see if you ride from 30th St. Station to NJ. It's empty. It owes huge back taxes that could pay for safety and schools.
ANY number of private owners would buy it at auction if it was put up next week. But the problem is that the agencies that control this property don't work that way.
This kills values, and hence property tax revenue to the city, in a 3 mile radius around the empty building, to say nothing of crime, and other costs to the city of blight.
The city's hog tied government causes delay where decision making is needed. Does this affect the fabric of the north Philly neighborhood surrounding it? Sure. Will it scare people? Sure. People want the old factories back, the old food, beer, and textile stuff to come back. It is braver, and more honest for pols to tell them the truth -- it won't.
Here's what they will get -- a new business that will have to go through the zoning approval process that the community contributes to. The state is not going to ram it down their throats like a casino.
What is there to be afraid of, except still more stasis?
I wish the paper was as anxious about, and could cost out on a spreadsheet, the huge price the city pays for all the vacant property that the city compiled through the years that buyers want, but that the city government can't seem to negotiate how to even liquidate.
No matter how much the city needs the money, no matter how much the city needs the new taxes coming in after a long vacant building is rebuilt and a new business comes in, how THAT impacts the "fabric" of the neighborhood.
What are we crying about again? Philly was beautiful, and some of its most beautiful buildings came out of when it had a strong industry/business and a small government, no planning or commerce dept. in a a city government, and the city kept focus on clean streets, police, schools, and the basics.
You gotta wonder of PAID should change it's name to PAIN, the Phila. Authority for Industrial NON development, within the Phila. I-Drag Down Commerce so that it comes to a weed filled empty lot grinding halt as we wring our hands in dismay that the Bush administration is forcing us to not build big budget Democratic party castles in the sky.
We have to use what we got. We've got business that wants this property, and will pay it. We've got a mayor that doesn't believe that business is the devil, and that it has a critical role in healthy cities. We don't have big block grants right now, and none are in the pipeline.
Let's go.
Posted by Anonymous | February 4, 2008 6:37 AM
We could dismantle OHCD right now and no one would notice. We could issue the order by 1pm, and no one would notice for years.
Even Street's NTI program took credit for things the private market did on its own -- like the Naval Square by Toll Brothers on 24th and Grays Ferry Ave.
That was all privately built. Rendell just allowed the city to sell the property to a private owner to renovate.
Did the city do any less well or better by having or not having a commerce director? A planning director? Frankly, you could have abolished both positions an simply sold the property with the exact same result IN LESS TIME.
Let's not oversell the role government could play. Many of the best deals for the city had limited public planning, though I prefer a robust planning process that is open, ethical, and transparent.
What does the mayor want to do, and can he simply allow the city to sell (competively, openly) to the best buyer so they can get started?
If I sound a bit weary, it's because the press wetted itself to proclaim the genius of borrowing money at high rates to pay for a program that the private market would do for free if it could only own the property that NTI tried to "clean and green."
Now the lots are trashy again, and the parcels are still scattered, and the city still wants to give them to agencies that have no money and are behind.
Let business work. Philly's economy reached its peak when government let business do the work that it could if allowed to.
With "agencies" and "authorities" and anything with the words "housing," "industrial," "community," or "development" in the title, Philly's economy, crime, jobs, robustness, and health of the neighborhoods have been in steady decline.
We have to de-USSR Philly. Every pol has to have econ 101. Invisible hands build visible results.
Posted by Anonymous | February 4, 2008 6:49 AM
But don't take my word for it, look at who owes the most in overdue property taxes and ask yourself, how can the city simply get these properties back online again?
TOP PROPERTY TAX DELINQUENTS IN PHILLY:
from /www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/topdelinquents/mailingaddress
Rank Owner Zip Code Total due # properties
1 REDEV AUTH OF PHILA 19107-3721-1234 $18,218,076.66 893
2 PHILADELPHIA INDUSTR IAL DEVELOPMENT 19102-2100-1500 $5,562,989.53 59
3 CITY OF PHILA 19103-2028-1600 $2,252,836.12 124
4 CITY OF PHILA 19102-1604-1401 $2,042,016.06 534
5 CONSOLIDATED RAIL CO RP 19101-8499-PO $1,564,404.24 15
6 AMTRAK 20002-4285-60 $1,559,178.32 12
7 SEPTA 19107-5233-130 $1,188,574.41 13
8 FARMER PAULINE 19119-2120-6950 $877,363.71 4
9 CONSOLIDATED RAIL CO RP 19103-7044-2001 $854,611.28 3
10 CITY OF PHILA 19102-1617-1401 $829,021.33 193
11 PA COMMONWEALTH OF D OT 19406-1525-7000 $701,601.71 9
12 FREMPONG AGNES 19146-0102-PO $653,907.87 13
13 ROMEL EAST LLC 94104-3503-268 $651,297.88 1
14 READING CO 90040-1572-500 $637,565.25 19
15 SCHWARTZ M & CO INC 19124-4520-4233 $570,851.05 6
16 MEDLEY ELIJAH 19141-0918-PO $511,518.08 4
17 1608 WALNUT STREET ASSOCIATES LP 19102-3116-1411 $482,524.81 6
18 PHILADELPHIA HOUSING AUTHORITY 19103-3014-12 $438,764.08 57
19 UNITED MACHINE & TOO L 19312-1920-422 $434,786.08 2
20 PHILADELPHIA HEALTHCARE PROPERTIES 00802-2601-9015 $430,553.10 4
Most of these are city agencies that hold property without paying property taxes but don't dispose of that property to those who will are agencies with no mandate to build a property tax base asap that pays for schools, or to get businesses in that provide jobs.
They "plan." They are agencies that issue 50 page "planning" documents. They "write policy." They try to set up deals with favored interested parties, previously it was understood that interested parties were loyal contributors in a process that became known in Philly, because it was so overt, as "pay to play."
Shouldn't we, in fairness to every school kid that goes to a school in need of revenue, who has a parent who needs a job or wants to buy a house, just auction that property off instead of "planning" it to death?
Posted by Anonymous | February 4, 2008 6:58 AM
Philly tries to plan before it has anything lined up to plan for. Let's let great groups like Penn Praxis work, look at best practices in planning and zoning in other cities, and work to make big changes in the city held blight collection of properties.
Ditto for PHA's scandalous use of vacant, blighted houses and lots to beg for money it won't use to maintain or build those lots.
Get PHA to sell what it can't possibly use, and USE the money to build what it does well.
Then planning comes in after that property is in play -- not before.
Philly tries to have masterplans of whole neighborhoods, and the neighbors are not even aware of it. Residents just want these lots gone to reasonable builders and businesses.
Philly's "planning" in OHCD consists of barfing up the same plan that hasn't been completed in years. That's why the years in OHCD are not expressed in normal years, but in odd OHCD time. No one knows what year they are referring to, and OHCD likes it that way.
I'd love for the press to go on the OHCD website and look at some of this crap that was passed off as planned development that just went to bad builders who cost a lot, promise the moon, and deliver very little. None on time, none at cost, and much of the land of these five year master-planned mega Democrat paradisos is just as vacant as when the mean old owners left in the Goode administration.
It's a sick joke.
I was so into housing funding, so into poverty funding, so into community grants, all federally funded of course, and then I MOVED TO PHILLY where I got to see millions wasted, and not one pol, not one journalist, interested in where that money went and why these planned developments NEVER HAPPENED.
Come on folks. If you're a good citizen, a good liberal, then treat this obvious abuse of planning and community development with the same scorn as you would an irresponsible corporation.
Planning will never have a good reputation until planners can honestly, boldly critique the misuses and outright FBI worthy abuses.
Darling Universal? Still owns more blight than it ever fixed. Precious RDA? A top property tax delinquent because the whole organization has decapitated itself, subverted itself, until its own mandates and redevelopment agreements are meaningless.
The city? What city holds thousands of vacant properties, residential houses, for years at a time, after the biggest real estate boom since WWII? What city creates blight and decimates its tax base and the surrounding equity and tax potential of properties by HOLDING properties for YEARS and doing this for mile after scattered mile of blight?
Look at how much property "the City of Phila." owns, and all that tax debt is not paid until through some miracle, someone is allowed to buy the property and renovate.
Then there's PHA. While what it plans is award winning, they didn't appear to plan how to collect the rent that would cover the property tax bill on 57 properties above. Since these properties pay property taxes, can't all PHA properties pay property taxes?
This is the kind of sensible first level planning that Philly "planning" ignores. We can't keep separating considerations of commerce, revenue, property taxes, equity, and planning.
The city economy doesn't segregate these ideas. No economy does.
And no, I'm not part of the Nutter admin., nor do I work for the city. I'm just a taxpaying owner who wonders why my taxes are going up on my modest property when people are not paying their fair share for the schools my neighbors' kids need NOW.
Posted by Anonymous | February 4, 2008 7:18 AM
The SEPTA building in CC can just be sold to a private owner and leased back to SEPTA. That way, a private owner is responsible for paying the taxes. This is being done all over PA and the region.
The landlord can assume the cost of upkeep, and can rent out excess commercial space while having a fixed guaranteed tenant in SEPTA.
This is a good example of how a commerce person works with a planning or cross-departmental focus.
Posted by ljlong | February 4, 2008 7:28 AM
When---- I said WHEN are the L and I deputies and supervisors going to get axed? Everyone and I mean everyone knows that quite a few of them are unethical, dishonest and downright criminal. When you get rid of these holdovers and lifetime civil servant/appointments, then you really begin the process of healing this department...we are waiting Mayor!
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