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The Politics of Growth -- a decade later

Though land-use decisions have always been a concern for shopping center developers, the last time the issue was as prominent as it is today was in the late 1980s -- not coincidentally, a time when the economy was humming along and new development was thriving.

Ten years ago, sprawl was the subject of a cover story in SCT.

Then along came bold new growth-management measures in California and Florida. Noting developers' "fear it might spread elsewhere," Shopping Centers Today devoted its October 1988 cover story to "The Politics of Growth."

In California, developers were struggling with ways to deal with regional calls for "no-growth" and "slow-growth" legislation. In Florida, the talk that year was about the impending arrival of concurrency, a provision of recently enacted statewide growth-management programs requiring infrastructure to be "concurrent" with the issuance of permits for new sites.

The legacy in California is more sprawl in the name of no-sprawl, as leftover strategies of the 1980s exposed many of the movement's faults.

Politicians elected on a no-growth platform in some California towns have had to go back on their words as their communities welcomed new retail following California's economic meltdown of the early '90s, said James Burchill, president of The Burchill Cos., a Davis, Calif., firm specializing in helping developers analyze community politics.

"The necessity of no-growth elected officials to prove to the electorate they can get something accomplished has led them to vote for things they might have originally opposed," Burchill said. "They're no longer outside screaming at the process, they're inside and they've got to produce."

More troubling still is that many of the no-growth policies have had the reverse effect of actually encouraging sprawl by shutting off communities, Burchill said. Urban limit lines in towns like Walnut Creek, Calif., have resulted in sporadic growth popping up elsewhere -- increasing traffic congestion and commute times.

Another effect of the late '80s slow-growth movement is that communities with little developable land now find themselves making hard choices between uses. While a community might need the convenience of a shopping center, it might opt instead for a hotel, which could generate more money, Burchill said. Meanwhile, the less-restricted communities are collecting all the retail: "Some places are becoming little retail islands, while other areas become little suburban ghettos," he said. For example, in Sonoma County, Calif., the town of Rohnert Park is a retail island, while the city of Sonoma has very little retail, according to Burchill.

In Florida in 1988, developers feared the impending arrival of concurrency would limit new construction. Instead, a rotten economy did a better job.

"You don't feel the effects of growth management if you're not growing," said Stephen Brandon, partner with The Brandon Cos., a Miami developer. "By the time the laws were coming into effect, the economy was going down the tubes. For a long time, nobody knew whether concurrency could control growth or not."

Today, with Florida rebounding robustly, Brandon said concurrency is doing what developers feared -- allowing growth management to act as a "moratorium on permitting." But the issue, Brandon feels, isn't with concurrency or growth management; it's that state funding for infrastructure is insufficient and therefore can't keep up with demand.

"What has failed here isn't growth management but the ability to fund it," Brandon said. "I believe concurrency is a good thing and that growth management is good. But there has to be a way to provide the money to create the infrastructure necessary so that we don't come to a screeching halt on development and growth."

Despite obvious missteps in California -- created, Burchill feels, by NIMBYism disguised as growth management -- things may get worse before they get better.

"The dilemma we have in California is, 'Where are we going to put the 7 million people expected to move here in the next 10 years?' " said Burchill. "If every community has an urban limit line, where are these people going to live? In a sense, we're moving farther and farther out, because local communities don't want to take their share of the growth.

"The world," he said, "has gotten even stranger."