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Shopping Centers Today -> October 2002
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ICSC PROGRAM LINKS PRIVATE, PUBLIC EXECUTIVES
By Ian Ritter
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Developers and public officials are increasingly recognizing a convergence of interests, especially when it comes to downtown development, and several ICSC Alliance Program meetings are scheduled in the coming year to help cement the relationship.
Municipalities need the tax income from retail projects, while developers increasingly require the assistance of public officials as sites get harder to find, particularly in downtown locations. Public-private financing arrangements are becoming increasingly commonplace, which also brings more interaction between the two sides.
ICSC started the Alliance Program in 1998 to bring developers and government leaders together to discuss development issues. The meetings for the remainder of this year are in White Plains, N.Y.; Seattle; Windsor Locks, Conn.; and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Topics at the White Plains meeting, to be held Oct. 8, include population decline in upstate New York cities; a high-technology boom in the Albany area; and the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.
Areas in upstate New York have suffered economic decline, said G. Lamont Blackstone, ICSC’s 2002 New York State Planning Committee co-chairman. But new high-tech industries promise to rejuvenate some of these areas, and retailers need to be aware of the opportunities they offer so as not to miss the boat, he said.
Over in the state’s southeast corner, Hempstead, N.Y., serves as an example of a town revitalized by public-private partnership. Glenn Spiritis, the town’s commissioner of community development, who will speak at the White Plains meeting, said Hempstead aggressively pursues developers and retailers, drawing Costco, The Home Depot and Old Navy, among others.
“We’ll show other people that maybe they should do the same thing,” Spiritis said. “Too often they wait for someone to come to them, and it just doesn’t happen that way.”
At Seattle’s meeting on Oct. 24, developers and government officials will trumpet Kent Station, a mixed-use train station in Kent, a suburban city south of Seattle. Expected to break ground next summer, it will feature 282,000 square feet of retail, among other elements. The city of Kent is developing the project with Seattle’s Tarragon Development Co. and Issaquah, Wash.-based Langly Properties.
The project was attractive to developers (15 applied for the project) because the city had bought the land, the former site of a chemical plant, in 1999 and took care of the environmental cleanup on its own, said Nathan Torgelson, the city’s economic development manager.
“The developer didn’t have to go through the [environment impact statement] process,” he said. “We had a vision which was adopted by our city council, which is crucial.”
The Kent Station project is a prime example of how municipalities and developers can work together, said Simon Property Group’s Gary R. Weber, ICSC’s State Government Relations Committee chairman in Washington state.
“Cities tend to employ urban planners and sometimes urban planners’ ideas don’t fit with the needs of retailers,” he said. “How do you merge those ideas?”
The Connecticut Alliance meeting on Nov. 7 will concentrate on “smart growth,” said Denise Roubidoux, marketing coordinator at The Hutensky Group.
All too often developers and public officials do not appreciate each other’s problems, several Alliance Program participants said, noting that this is exactly the issue that the program is designed to resolve.
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