While single-family home sales are rebounding and office parks being renovated ”” aspects of the market that are familiar urban neighborhoods are catching up and fueling the economy by spiking construction and retail jobs, increasing real estate sales, brokerage commissions, financing, title coverage and providing urban amenities to newly formed households looking for lively and livable places to work and live.
These efforts in the cities and villages that host our colleges, hospitals, affordable housing, restaurants and entertainment venues make both themselves and traditional suburban development more viable. Workers and residents, for example, are attracted to a transformed mixed-use office park on the Platinum Mile when they can access the shopping, night life and services available in a rejuvenating White Plains, Tarrytown or Port Chester.
Our region is not alone in this transformation. In many places, urban development of this type is called smart growth, a term coined to describe the radical changes in state policy in Maryland at the hand of former Gov. Parris Glendening. He invested state funds in priority growth areas to foster new development and in conservation areas to preserve natural resources.
Smart growth is criticized by some as being too vague but the reverse is true. It is very precise. Consistent with market trends, private investors and governments simply decide to grow and invest in designated growth areas and where to conserve, preserving the natural environment that is essential for ecological services, public health, and livability. There is nothing vague about it. This is a market-driven trend caused by changing demographics and aided by private-public partnerships that involve all sectors of the private market and a surprisingly well-coordinated effort on the part of the federal, state, and local governments.
What was barely perceptible in the real estate market 15 years ago is rapidly becoming a booming business. Developers make it clear that they will invest in this new market but only where local mayors and councils are champions of economic development, where a clear local vision for development is in place, and where the local land use approval process works efficiently. Several of our cities and villages are leading the effort to attract development. Many real estate companies are transforming themselves into developers of mixed-use complexes, transit-oriented buildings, and sustainable neighborhoods. Those who serve real estate development are paying attention, changing their business models as needed to get ahead of and capitalize on this trend.
Local governments set the stage for the zoning that permits smart growth by developing a vision for their future in a comprehensive plan, transit area plan or local waterfront revitalization plan. Zoning that conforms to these plans makes it clear what type of investments will be approved. When this is complemented with a project review process that is transparent and predictable, the locality becomes development-ready and developers are all the more interested in investing there. These plans, regulations and streamlined approval processes are clues to the market as to future opportunities.
Gradually over the past few years the policies of the state of New York have caught up with our smart-growth developers and their municipal allies. The state has adopted a smart-growth infrastructure plan, new energy plan and vision, complete street infrastructure policy, Main Street program, climate-smart communities program, and transit-oriented development policies and programs. Together, these state efforts create a clear target for local governments and developers to address. Nearly $800 million are made available annually through nearly a dozen state agencies, awarding projects that hit this mark.
Here are some examples of those smart-growth projects in Westchester County and the lower Hudson Valley:
- The local waterfront revitalization plan in the city of Peekskill and the rezoning of land around the Metro-North station there where city-owned parking lots provide potential for new transit-oriented development.
- An urban renewal plan nearing adoption in the village of Brewster, one of the first urban municipalities in decades to adopt such a plan, which will also lead to the transformation of the downtown adjacent to the Metro-North station.
- The initiation of a no-nonsense planning effort in the city of White Plains that will yield new ideas about how properties in the White Plains Multimodal Transportation Center neighborhood can be redeveloped to create an inviting gateway and new development opportunities.
- The partnership between developers RD/RXR and the city of New Rochelle to use city-owned land and a newly adopted downtown renewal plan and zoning to jump-start the redevelopment of a large area centered on the Metro-North station in the downtown and opening up project opportunities for RD/RXR and existing owners – developments that meet the new market”™s hunger for sustainable neighborhoods.
- Several large-scale development efforts underway in Yonkers and Mount Vernon that now seem a reality in neighborhoods that the public sector has been trying to revitalize for decades.
- In the northern part of the market area, Poughkeepsie and Newburgh both have become more development-ready through a variety of efforts including creating a land bank, revitalizing in-rem properties, selective demolitions, rezoning, and creating downtown revitalization plans attuned to the needs of the emerging market.
In Fairfield County similar smart growth efforts are underway.
In Stamford, Building and Land Technology is transforming the former 500,000-square-foot Pitney Bowes facility overlooking Long Island Sound. This is an exciting component of the developer”™s Silicon Harbor project, a “live, work, play” development that features offices, stores, restaurants and 2,360 residential apartments in nine buildings.
The state of Connecticut is helping redevelopment in older industrial areas with a new grant program that will spur brownfield redevelopment throughout Connecticut. The program will be administered by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development. Grants are intended to help communities develop implementation plans for remediating and redeveloping clusters of brownfield sites. As in New York, this is one of several state programs designed to revitalize urban neighborhoods, downtowns, and waterfront districts for businesses, housing, and public amenities that will generate jobs and revenues.
In Norwalk, CBRE Group”™s Westchester/Fairfield County office is marketing a 190,000-square-foot, 13-story building, to be called SoNo Place, in the revitalizing, mixed-use South Norwalk neighborhood.
The building, constructed in 1972, is undergoing a complete renovation by Capital Equities Group, a private real estate investment firm working in the mixed-use SoNo neighborhood. Capital Equities Group is cooperating with the city to make improvements to a park adjacent to the building and to construct landscaping beds on the lot in front of the building. The company foresees similar external improvements at other properties it owns adjacent to this project.
These are all examples of what happens when local plans and zoning designate priority growth districts and developers and municipalities form partnerships to develop intelligently in them. What is smart about these projects, in addition to being sensitive to powerful new market trends and utilizing existing infrastructure, is that they also greatly reduce, on a per household basis, water consumption, energy use, materials needed, and impervious coverage that causes storm water runoff and flooding. They can also be more affordable, particularly where localities offer bonus densities to developers in exchange for workforce housing, bringing office, research, retail, and service workers closer to where they work.
This was the idea that Gov. Glendenning had in mind when he formulated his smart growth strategy. Glendening will be joined by a panel of government officials and a real estate developer in this region on March 24 at Pace Law School to discuss how this strategy works and, most importantly, why and where it is working in our region.
John R. Nolon is distinguished professor of law at Pace Law School and founder of and faculty liaison to the law school”™s Land Use Law Center. He can be reached at jnolon@law.pace.edu.
