Coloradans are pushing back on urban renewal abuse
In June, a south suburban Denver fire district filed suit against the urban renewal authority (URA) in Parker, Colorado over the diversion of property taxes to subsidize redevelopment projects. Also in June, news broke that the URA in Arvada, Colorado in the north metro Denver area sold a 9-acre parcel of land to a developer for $30. The land is valued at around $9 million.
Reining in the Tax-Gobbling Menace
Rahm Emanuel, the newly elected fiscally conservative mayor of Chicago, wants to “overhaul” that city’s tax-increment financing program, which he says “morphed from a tool for blighted economic communities into an all-purpose vehicle.” TIF was first used in Chicago by Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s, whose goal was to help blighted neighborhoods. Critics say […]
Ending Urban Redevelopment
Despite pressure from cities, Jerry Brown stands firm in his proposal to end redevelopment agencies, a plan he says will immediately save the state $1.7 billion a year, and more than double that after 2012. Meanwhile, the Idaho Freedom Foundation publishes a report proposing to eliminate urban renewal in that state. Urban-renewal agencies in Idaho […]
Movie Review: Road House
The Antiplanner doesn’t ordinarily review movies, but then, not many movies cover the dark side of urban renewal. Someone once called Road House, featuring the late Patrick Swayze, the “cheesiest movie ever made,” but they must not have been aware of the political subtext. In the movie, Brad Wesley (played by Ben Gazzara) is the […]
Portland Urban Renewal Scam
The Antiplanner’s former hometown of Portland, Oregon, is proposing to create a new urban renewal district that is so gerrymandered that blogger Jack Bogdanski suspects it must cover at least 50 scams. Most of Portland’s previous urban renewal districts are pretty regular, following roughly rectangular boundaries. The proposed new district has fingers going in all […]
Despite TIF, the Bells Don’t Toll
Tualatin, a distant suburb of Portland, is the proud owner of three large and expensive bells that may never toll (there were supposed to be four, but one was stolen). The bells were purchased with TIF (tax-increment finance) money as a part of a $12 million subsidy to Tualatin Commons, a New Urbanist development. But […]
