The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Lawrence, KS does an interesting thing to encourage developers to meet certain stated public goals.  Their zoning code allows for "development bonuses" for meeting those goals, which can be "redeemed" for greater flexibility in certain requirements (allowing greater density, building height, reduction in required parking, etc).

For example, you can earn bonuses by locating your development:
 - within 1/2 mile of a fire station
 - within 1 mile of a police station
 - within 1/4 mile of a park or public space
 - in an existing commercial or nonresidential center with adequate utility and transportation Infrastructure to support redevelopment
 
Or you could earn bonuses by providing a combination of housing types:
 - non-ground floor units
 - live/work units
 - attached dwellings
 - zero lot line dwellings

Or for ensuring environmental benefits such as:
 - green roofs
 - LEED building certification
 - following stormwater best practices

It's an interesting way to encourage development patterns that make the city more economically viable.  Every one of these options helps the city.  Reducing stormwater, reducing the need to provide additional services and amenities, and encouraging development and increasing the tax base in areas where the infrastructure is already built.

Arlington Virginia built a bonus system into their zoning code to encourage mixed uses and density:

http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/openhouse/development/the-audacious-plan-to-turn-a-sprawling-dc-suburb-into-a-big-city.php (http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/openhouse/development/the-audacious-plan-to-turn-a-sprawling-dc-suburb-into-a-big-city.php)

In personal conversations I’ve had with someone in the city planning department, it is very obvious the TMAPC and the Mayor’s office simply do not share the same vision with the people in the COT planning department.

Next mayoral election, we need to find and fund someone who finally gets that all new development is not necessarily good development.  We need to start seeding the council with like-minded candidates.  We also need people who can attract the kind of jobs and industries which would compliment the fabric of our city.

Since the mayor seeds the TMAPC with appointments, this is one way to start to turn the tide for better infill development via incentivizing that rather than subsidizing sprawl which simply does not even pay for its own infrastructure and public safety needs.

If Tulsa had been growing at 5% per year or so the last 20 years, all the sprawl might be paying for itself.  But then we’d have a huge backlog of infrastructure needs just like Austin does now.

We need someone who can finally lobby to get a public four-year single institution college program (Hello?? OSU anyone?).  With all the land surrounding OSU Tulsa, there is so much potential to attract students from outside the area and I don’t think you’d penalize Stillwater in the process.  Some students prefer the small college town experience, others would rather be in a larger city. 

Finally, let’s save our most lucrative incentives to attract higher paying jobs rather than more warehouse, retail, and phone centers.

+1 Conan.

I've played Sim City, and it bares out a simple fact that City Planners have been harping on for decades: Growth for the sake of growth is a zero sum game. Going back in time, Tulsa would be far better off with rails instead of buses. We would be far better off with neighborhoods instead of the BA. We would be far better off with a collection of buildings between TCC and Boston Ave. than acres of mostly unused asphalt (~50% use on a busy day. Church is in session the south half is full. School in session the north half. How often at the same time? Never.).

But, we continue to pay for growth just for the sake of growth. There is no plan. There is the little blue bar indicating that we need to zone more light commercial so we plop down some roads, lay some pipe, run the wires and let them build. It's the 10 year old method of designing a city.

And jobs...

Again, there is a place and a time when you need to whore yourself out in any manner possible in order for your city to land jobs. But then there are times when you are under 5% unemployment and we need to consider if the jobs we are paying for and attracting are actually adding to the City. If we attract jobs that pay less than a living wage and the job holders are eligible for all kinds of government aid just to survive - then we are paying subsidies for the business to come to Tulsa, and then paying to subsidize the the workforce so the company can make larger profits. In short, we are turning our public investment into private profits and shipping it out of Tulsa.

I can't see how that is a net economic gain. It's the old tale that the accountant tells the owner that the factory is losing money on every widget that they produce and sell... so the owner demands that they make up for it in volume.

I never understood the concept that: “If we lose a lot of money on one item, let’s keep charging the same amount on that item and do it one million times and we will make a killing!”

Only if the government makes that possible.

Growth for Growth's sake...it seems like it would be obvious that this doesn't work. Simply drive around Tulsa and look for the many strip malls and big box stores that were built less than a decade ago that are now out of favor/style and sitting vacant. This just creates a cycle of always chasing the new and newer, like trying to keep a leaky bucket full.

The result of this way of thinking is just more disposable land with uninspired development that the city must expand government service to reach while the tax base erodes on the older discarded Wal*marts and Quicktrips and strip malls.
 
Density allows for much smaller footprint with a larger tax base and reduced local government cost to serve. A fully utilized multi-story building can produce a lot more sales tax per acre than a strip mall or big box.

A small government republican mayor should be a champion of density, not sprawl.

I have ranted about that blight in the past and it has been like hitting the snooze button.... I don't think this is all that tough a problem to solve - it's just getting the will to do so.


How about some ideas on how to create incentives to owners to NOT let these venues sit vacant for years on end?  Maybe something along the line of leaving the normal property tax structure in place for a building under the condition that it is "gainfully employed" - another concept we try so hard to apply to people to receive assistance but not corporations.

By gainfully employed I mean not vacant and decaying.  A building owner has a limited time - say 1 year? - to clean up and make presentable, then rent a facility to a paying customer.  After 1 year (the limited time), the property tax goes up by 25%.  The next year it goes up another 25%.  Each successive year of non-use another 25%.  When rented out to a paying customer - where verifiable, visible, legitimate, business activity of some sort occurs, the property tax goes back to its normal level - and NO retroactive property tax relief/refunds!!  The paying customer could be a non-profit or small business incubator type entity.  Rent can be nominal in those type cases - just as long as something is going on that keeps the place presentable, open, and operational.

Several desirable goals are accomplished with this approach.  First, the owner is incentivized (is that really a word? I don't believe it - sounds made up.) to keep the place rentable (another made up word), at least to some minimal level so it can be rented out.

Second, we will be much less likely to see absentee owners 'sit' on properties that are unusable eyesores for an extended period of time - nobody gets to wait for decades like they can now!  If they should just not pay the taxes, well the property will be back in circulation with a new owner much sooner than ever happens with today's way of doing things!  Seems like we discuss some downtown buildings that could benefit from this, too!!

This would be a 'self-cleansing' operation that would eliminate long term blight of these ridiculously overbuilt strip center nonsense locations.  If we could somehow tie the performance of the uninspired development (I love that phrase and am going to steal it from you and use it!!) to the official zoning structure that lets them happen, all the better!  Maybe a city 'rule' that evaluates development types and if a threshold of some number of 'types' is exceeded, that type is automatically taken off the list of allowable developments - can't build another one, since there are X number of empty ones around...use one of them!  Jail time for zoning board members who approve stupid sh$t would be good, too, but probably can't go quite that far...


Couple of cases from OKC area of 'alternate use' of space (since we like to lament how great OKC is comparatively).  Crossroads Mall shut down years ago.  For several years - and they may still be there - haven't been by in about two years - two local model train clubs (non-profits) rented a couple of stores at opposite ends of the mall for display setups.  They were open very limited hours - couple evenings a week and on weekends.  Were not charged much rent - pennies on the dollars, but they did fulfill the requirements above.  They got very cheap rent and had a lease term just like a regular business, so they couldn't just be thrown out on the street when the mall got a tenant that wanted that space.  Decay halted.


Can't Tulsa look at innovative ways of doing things like these???

The city puts in place zoning laws and other strict regulations that say you must do this and this and can't do that, in many instances these laws make it almost impossible to retrofit, or bring to new life older buildings. Would it then be right for the city to then say, btw we will punish you if you do not rent these places out?  All I have to do to see an example of that is the building off 11th that is still empty that we tried to put a business into, but found out we couldn't, partly because of minimum parking requirements.  Even many owners of properties I have spoken to are frustrated that the zoning and other regulations effectively make their properties unrentable.

The "city" to "battle" on the sprawl itself isn't Tulsa.  Other than the northern and western areas development blew past Tulsa's fenceline long ago.  Tulsa needs to make it easier to develop not harder.  Builders hate building in Tulsa because it is so difficult and the ability to have a continuous flow of income is tough.

Jenks, Bixby, BA, Owasso are the cities that are whoring themselves out residential development that is creating the endless sprawl.

There's still a lot of undeveloped land in Tulsa that could easily end up becoming sprawl if we choose to not act.

Yeah...I left that part out - you have to have a city administration involved that has at least half a brain.  Part of that would be the "development type" I mentioned but you have to change city hall first. 

So, let's quit electing the clown show and do something different for a change!!

If you could complete a 200 lot development of middle-class single family homes within the boundaries of the city of Tulsa, where would you do it?  Has to be feasible to the point that builders would buy the lots and start building immediately.  AKA, just like the lot draws that have happened in the last few weeks for new developments in BA, Jenks and Bixby.

As the planners the city hired told them, we have about a 15 year reprieve with the Tulsa Hills area (make that 10 at this point) then things will slow down drastically development wise for tulsa per the "sprawl type" development.  And if we haven't got our ducks in a row for good infill development and transit, we are screwed on many fronts, low growth in the city, high traffic (if the suburbs continue to grow), and high infrastructure costs.

But, per the original question.  My thought right now is education.  Ultimately it seems that it's about educating enough of the public to understand something about the subject and or somehow educating enough of the developers and the decision makers at city hall and elsewhere. Most people have absolutely no clue what so ever.  Even people I meet who are otherwise educated, engaged, informed on many topics are absolutely clueless about "zoning" and such and why we have what we have, or that there are other options.

And educating people who have not, like me and some others on here, talked about and learned about these things for years and years... well it's really hard and time consuming just trying to have a "conversation" with them here and there and thinking you can get it across to them.  Either they already get it, perhaps they may have lived before in a different more urban environment, or they have no clue and its practically hopeless when you talk to them for you realize just how little they know and how there is sooooo much they will have to be told in order to finally have that "ah ha" moment and get it.

Sometime this year I want to make a you-tube type video.  I think the right video having a conversation with images and examples could get people to have that "ah I get it, I see what your trying to say" moment far more quickly than just words could.  And though I have looked I have never found a video that is already out there that does that, they often kind of sorta get a few pieces out there but don't do it like I can envision.  I have tried making contact with people who I have been told also want to do this kind of thing but never get a return answer so now figure I will just do it myself.  

I like the things you say and having lived in Tulsa before sprawl changed us like midlife changes our bodies, it makes good sense. You can educate everyone, you can educate leaders and still not achieve what you (we) want. This is a time of polarization, pro-growth vs anti-growth. Smart growth vs sprawl etc. Facts mean little. Comparisons with other cities are almost offensive to them. Mindsets are hard to change.

Find a developer who can make money, lots of money, under the zoning changes you propose and with the framework he/she has at hand and you change an entire community.

WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

Winning is good.  :)

The reasons that Tulsa used to be so pedestrian friendly, self sustaining, low traffic and convenient was because the original developers were serving the needs of the time with the ingredients they had to work with. And made good money doing it. It wasn't regulating that gave us all that stuff it was self interest.

The regulations were merely guidance and were influenced by the very people involved. Just like today. So, it follows that sprawl was inevitable.  Even though poor public policy, it grew from customer need and money driven myopia. No amount of disincentives would have stopped it.

Soon, it will not be so profitable and we'll boomerang back or start to decay. Truth is it has already begun. Areas I used to see as elite, well designed, well served and great for resale are now approaching negative on all those characteristics. 51st-81st, Riverside to Memorial. Weird to watch. The retail is sketchy in those areas to me. The huge density of apartments, changing income and racial make-up of the area  is taking its toll. No amount of incentive related to zoning will change that.

Builders, developers and real estate people are about making big money. That is what lured them into the industry. Not sustainability unless it makes them money. Show them how.

What rdj said.

And the city would actually prosper better financially.  A member of the TUWC had lunch with the Mayor’s ED, Clay Bird, last week.  Between that meeting and Bird's comments in regards to smart development at the forums discussing the Simon development on Turkey Mountain, it is clear that this administration has never been schooled in smart development or simply chooses to ignore it and play dumb.  They figure if you just keep building there will be enough critical mass to overcome all the attendant costs to the infrastructure.

At no point in Tulsa’s recent history am I aware that we have managed to outstrip the costs associated with sprawl in new revenue.  With Tulsa’s predictable growth rate of 1-2% per year, there simply is no way to make it sustainable.

Realtors in this town don't help, they consistently steer new Tulsa residents to the suburbs for housing options. I've met lots of people who tell me they bought in Bixby, Owasso, Jenks when they moved here for work because their realtor told them they did not want to buy/could get more/avoid TPS in the suburb than in Tulsa. 

Given the option...   Would you want your children to go to TPS?

I understand that Booker T. is a wonderful high school....   But what if your kid doesn't make it?   Why not have your child be safe with all the other white kids in the suburbs?

(Not sure if that is racist or truth....   Or both.)

When I  moved to Tulsa my realtor steered me away from west Tulsa even though I liked a couple houses over there and thought they were a good value.  We knew we didn't want to live in the 'burbs, so midtown was where we landed at the time.

TPS has wonderful options for education from K-12 at multiple sites, not just Booker T.

You also have to look at ease of development.  Developing a subdivision involves more than just slapping houses up, it involves sewer, stormwater, electrical infrastructure, cutting streets, etc.  The land in Jenks and Bixby and southern BA is infinitely easier to cut streets, dig sanitary sewer, etc than land in east or northwest Tulsa.  I have worked on plans for a couple different projects in east Tulsa and the development costs are much higher and the timeline much longer than doing a similar development in Bixby.  When coupled with the perceived superior educational and retail amenities it is a no-brainer for the developer, builder, realtor and homebuyer to keep the sprawl south.  You have similar issues with redevelopment in the pockets around downtown.  To amass the land needed to make it worthwhile for a builder to do a consistent project your acquisition timeline and costs is completely different when buying from 30-40 homeowners that each speculative dollars than it is buying a 120 acre tract of land.  A builder cannot make consistent cash flow doing onsies and twosies in various neighborhoods throughout midtown.

Not a very attractive statement for you. If you think your kid is superior (we all do) then put him in private school. I recommend Holland Hall. Likely he'll graduate and never come back except for holidays!

If he is average or slightly above, you are naïve to think suburban schools will be better for him.  Unless you are simply afraid to have him mix with nonwhites for safety reasons. They are high percentage white but bullies, drug dealers, punks, and thieves (white and non white) attend suburban schools too.

If you want the college campus feel in grade and middle school with an emphasis on conformity and military style discipline by all means go to Jenks. Good football too, though the spirit far outshines the talent. Talk to teachers and administrators from suburban schools and you find they are having the same problems as TPS. Look at their scores on achievement tests and they are not outstanding. Some even on par with low performing TPS schools.

Real estate people are by and large much like the builders and developers they are beholding to. Swayed by big money, big cars, conformity and shiny things.



 

The city is going to be less and less able to compete with the suburbs for suburban style development, that is one reason why its going to be ever more important that we create good urban development. 

We are not going to be able to compete with the suburbs for a cheap, new, suburban lifestyle and shouldn't want to.  But we will be competing with other cities to see who can offer a quality, premium lifestyle, or cheap crime/poverty ridden one. 

I like suburbia but down town should not try to compete with Bixby, Jenks, Owasso....... as a suburban community.

I have said many times, I want to live near a city but not in the city.  If there is no city, I cannot live near it.

Is that sarcasm? If not you might want to do some soul searching before your kids end up on an internet video singing vile songs.

I went to TPS, my family too and my brothers' and sister's kids are all doing great in TPS. No safety concerns.

Just trying to play devils advocate.   

Most of the reasons I hear (obviously not a large study) that people don't want to live in Tulsa is the perception of the schools.    Yes, there are drug dealers and gang bangers of every race, creed and color...    Although, it is rare that I hear about "gang violence" in Broken Arrow, Owasso, Jenks or Bixby.

I wouldn't put my kids in private school.   Not that those are bad, but they have their issues too.

Its rare for a few reasons. They control what info goes out. So does TPS. They are large employers who have influence. Mostly though its because TPS is so large and spread out. There is only one Jenks, one Bixby and one Broken Arrow high school. There are about nine in TPS not including alternative.

My nephew had problems with gangs and drug use at Union but no one really identifies Union with that. But any northside, or east side school is going to have crime in nearby neighborhoods that identifies those schools as problem schools when in reality they are not having those problems because of increased security and administrative efforts.

Follow the money. Real estate agents sell what makes them the most money in the fastest time with the lowest learning curve. That means new construction and new buyers and the burbs. TPS stokes their coals.

That is no longer accurate

Sorry to hear that. Drugs and their attendant behavior have made it into all the schools including private.

Granddaughter was at Union 2 1/2 years ago.  Her comment - "it's sooooo ghetto...." 

She was comparing to school attended in Baton Rouge, LA.