Do Lawrence and Douglas County need growth management?

Do Lawrence and Douglas County need growth management?

 

Growth management is one approach to planning.  This approach recognizes that the development industry tends to overbuild.  Growth management overcomes this tendency by restricting the growth in the supply of housing or retail space or any other type of development to just the amount that satisfies the growth in demand.

Table 1 looks at the changes in households and housing units in Douglas County and in Lawrence from 2000 to 2013.  It is clear that the area experienced significant overbuilding of housing during this period.

 

Table 1: Growth in Households and Housing Units
	2013	2000	Change
Douglas County, Kansas
Households	43,398	38,486	4,912
Housing Units	47,060	40,250	6,810
Surplus Units			1,898
Surplus Units per year			146
Lawrence, Kansas
Households	34,426	31,388	3,038
Housing Units	37324	32792	4,532
Surplus Units			1,494
Surplus Units per year			115
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census

 

From 2000 to 2013, Douglas County grew by 4,912 households, but it allowed developers to build 6,810 homes.  This generated a surplus of 1,898 homes over the period or 146 surplus homes per year.

From 2000 to 2013, Lawrence grew by 3,038 households, but it allowed developers to build 4,532 homes.  This generated a surplus of 1,494 homes over the period or 115 surplus homes per year.

 

Planning Implications

Lawrence and Douglas County have seen a long-term process of overbuilding by developers.  This long history of overbuilding is compelling evidence that the development industry does not police itself well, nor does the current approach to planning which simply zones land and assumes that the development industry will pace itself so as to match the expansion and contraction of demand.

This overbuilding harms the community by causing disinvestment in older neighborhoods and sprawl at the perimeter. 

Map 1 examines the spatial distribution of the changes in the counts of households in census tracts from 2000 to 2013.  It is readily apparent that the overbuilding is not evenly spread across Lawrence. Rather, the overbuilding is most intense in the western parts of the city and in the Prairie Park area in the southeast.  This has not left the other neighborhoods unharmed.  The older neighborhoods in the central part of the city have lost population as the surplus stock built at the perimeter draws the population away from older neighborhoods causing them to lose population and investment.

 

Map 1:  Gain or Loss in Households in Census Tracts 2000 to 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planning in a community like Lawrence should seek to protect and even enhance the condition of older neighborhoods.  Continuation of the overbuilding will only continue to exacerbate the population losses and value losses in the older neighborhoods.  Thus, the concern for the older neighborhoods is not to increase density in lieu of sprawl at the perimeter of the city.  Rather, the concern is to manage the growth of the community so as to replenish the population losses in the older neighborhoods.  If some share of the growth can be attracted back to the older neighborhoods it can help to restore those neighborhoods and stimulate reinvestment in them.

 

Appropriate Planning Response

Growth management has the potential to bring balance to the development process by keeping the growth of supply in balance with the growth in demand.

It is recommended that Lawrence and Douglas County adopt growth management in its comprehensive plan.  The concept is straightforward; if the community is growing by 250 households per year, the planning process should not permit more than 250 additional units to be added to the supply. 

To rectify the harm that has been done to older neighborhoods, the planning process should strive to keep the growth in supply below the growth in demand for a period of time so as to direct some portion of the growth back into the older neighborhoods restoring the population, investment and value previously lost.

Growth management offers a new, more beneficial form of competition to the development process.  Under the current approach, developers compete with each other for a limited demand, harming older neighborhoods in the process.  Under growth management, developers compete with each other for selection as one of the designated developers for the limited amount of development that will be permitted given the growth in demand.  As the developers compete for this designation, they tend to enhance their projects through the provision of community services and other amenities in order to be selected.  This permits the community to gain from these enhancements and to better direct growth in supply where it is needed, more effectively than can be done through zoning alone.

 

 

 

 

Should Lawrence Approve the Southpoint Development on South Iowa Street?

The Proposed Southpoint Development

The applicant, Collett and Associates, seeks to develop a parcel on Iowa Street through an amendment to Horizon 2020, annexation of land and rezoning of the land. The proposal, Southpoint, calls for development of: About 460,000 square feet of retail in a first phase; 80,000 square feet for a 100-room hotel; and probably about 70,000 square of additional square feet of retail in a second phase (14 parcels at 5,000 square feet per parcel).  The development will contain a total of over 600,000 square feet of commercial space.

 

This project is large; when fully built it will be the equivalent of 40 percent of our downtown.  It will expand the supply of space on South Iowa by about 30 percent.  At this scale it has the potential to have a significant negative impact on other retail shopping districts in Lawrence, including the downtown.

Additional Hotel Space:

 

The issue:  Can the community absorb additional hotel space without threatening existing and future taxpayer investment in hotels?

 

The taxpayers of Lawrence are heavily invested in hotels.  The taxpayers invested about $11 million in the Oread Hotel.  The taxpayers are investing about $10 million in the 9^th and New Hampshire project with a significant portion of that amount serving the new hotel.

 

Lawrence has zoned multiple parcels for additional hotel space.  Hotel zoning was approved in the North Mass development.  Hotel zoning was approved in the latest revision of the Bauer Farms development.

 

Lawrence is about to begin a process that may lead to a new conference center.  This center will probably include additional hotel space, and this hotel and conference center will probably include a significant taxpayer contribution.

               

The Southpoint proposal includes a hotel.  The staff report is silent on the hotel issue.  It is unknown whether or not the city can absorb an additional hotel without threatening its already large investment in hotels.

 

The City made the hotel investments without careful study of the city’s capacity to absorb new hotel space.  The City is about to embark on such a study to guide it to a better decision on the conference center.

 

Zoning for additional hotel space may hurt an already saturated market.  Zoning for additional hotel space may threaten existing taxpayer investment.

 

Recommendation on the hotel component:  Do not approve additional hotel space until the absorption study is complete and it is clear that additional hotel space will not threaten existing, and possibly future, taxpayer investment.

 

 

Additional Retail Space:

 

The Issue: Can the Lawrence retail market absorb the proposed space without significant negative impact upon existing retail districts?

               

The Economics of Retail Markets:  In a well-balanced market, the supply should grow in proportion with growth in demand.

 

The economics of retail real estate are well established.  Demand for retail space is what determines the value of retail space, the number of jobs it will produce and the sales tax revenues that it will generate.  The supply of retail space does not drive these outcomes. There are many false beliefs that building real estate grows the economy.  It does not.  Growth in the economy is a function of growth in the aggregate income of the households within the community because income sets the amount of spending that a market will experience.  More stores do not create more spending; rather, only more income to the households in the community can drive growth in the economy.  As a result, more stores do not create more spending, more sales taxes, more retail jobs or more value of all retail buildings.  If too many stores are added to a market, the stores vie for the finite amount of spending, driving down the revenue per square foot, hurting all stores.

 

Retail Demand:  The best proxy for demand in a market is the local retail sales tax revenues.  They show the actual spending in the market reflecting changes in income, the community’s pull factor and the use of on-line shopping.

 

The City’s retail market study shows that inflation adjusted retail sales taxes have been flat from 2000 to 2012.  They actually declined very slightly at -.012 percent per year over the last twelve years.  However, there has been negligible growth from 1995 to 2014 at +0.40 percent per year. Thus, for a long period of time, retail spending in real terms has not grown for about 20 years.  See the table below.

 

 

Table:    Lawrence Retail Supply and Demand Conditions 1995 to 2012

	Inflation
	Adjusted	Commercial
	Sales	Square
Year	Taxes	Feet
2012	$   13,593,996	9,105,151
2000	$   13,797,066	5,299,404
1995	$   12,695,769	4,372,183
Demand Annualized Growth Rate
	0.40%	1995 to 2012
	-0.12%	2000 to 2012
Supply Annualized Growth Rate
	4.4%	1995 to 2012
	4.6%	2000 to 2012

 

 

Source:  City of Lawrence 2012 Retail Market Report

 

Demand Conclusion:  The city’s capacity to support growth in its supply of retail space is non-existent.  With no growth in retail spending, the city has no capacity to support additional retail space at this time.  The developer is only seeking to capture a share of that spending for the proposed development, taking this demand, and possibly some of the vendors, away from existing shopping districts.

 

Retail Supply: The stock of retail space has grown dramatically since 1995, which is the last time there seemed to be a balance between the supply of and the demand for retail space.  From 1995 to 2012, the stock grew by 4.8 million square feet.  This growth translates into a rate of growth of 4.4 percent per year.   The City has approved an additional 1.2 million square feet at 6^th Street and the SLT, Fairfield Farms, North Mass and 31^st and Ousdahl Streets.

               

Supply conclusion:  The supply of retail space is growing rapidly with much more approved for development. 

 

Implications:  The supply of retail space is growing rapidly while the retail spending is flat.  This means that the revenues per square foot are falling.  Reduced revenues lowers property values in existing shopping centers, including the downtown.  Reduced revenues threaten the ability of attract investment to older existing properties.  This is especially threatening to historic properties such as in our downtown.

 

If we expect to maintain the condition of our existing shopping centers, and especially if we want out downtown to continue to thrive, the space needs to attract sufficient revenue per square foot to drive sufficient lease rates that attract investment.

 

Staff report:  The staff report on the proposed development concludes that because the vacancy rate has not become terribly bad, that the retail market will not be hurt by this development.

 

Vacancy is one of many measures of market health, but vacancy is one of the weaker indicators of market health.  The notion is that if a market is overbuilt, the vacancy rate will rise proportionately.  This is not true. Property owners will fill their space, even if it means granting rent concessions to attract occupants.  Even with a rent concession that takes rents below costs, the property owner will lose less with a rent concession than with an empty property.

 

The staff should expand its analysis to examine the revenues coming into each market segment (defined both spatially and by type of vendor).  It is clear from the staff report that the market is suffering from declining revenues per square foot over a long period of time, which leads to poor maintenance and reduced investment in existing properties, both of which are harmful to a retail market.

 

The Caplan Report:  The market analysis provided by the developer contains multiple errors.  Probably the most severe is the assumption that sales will rise 4.1 percent per year when they have not even been keeping up with inflation for a long period of time.

 

The Caplan report uses the argument that the proposed development will improve the Pull Factor of the entire retail market.  The report claims that the community will benefit from new spending attracted to the local market.  This can be a valid claim in a tourist market or a market with very special tenants that they become a destination shopping location not found in the region nor having any close substitutes elsewhere in the region.

 

This notion of attracting new spending into the community is simply not plausible with the proposed project. The vendors will not attract shoppers that are not already here.  The vendors listed in the development proposal are not unique to the Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka region.  Thus, shoppers from Johnson County will not drive here for these vendors; they already have them in Johnson County.  Shoppers from Shawnee County will not drive here for these vendors; they already have them, or have very close substitutes, in Topeka.

 

The best option to improve the pull factor in Lawrence is to enhance the one unique, destination shopping district that we have, Downtown Lawrence.

                                               

Recommendation:          

 

Someday, this site on South Iowa Street may be an appropriate site for additional retail space and even hotel space on the scale proposed. That day is not even in sight.

 

• Retail spending remains flat while the supply has grown too quickly.
• We want to enhance, not degrade, the condition of our shopping centers and especially our downtown.
• We do not want to jeopardize our current and future hotel investments.

 

Lawrence should tell the developer that this proposal is premature and cannot be approved at this time.