Marshall County

Water Street Townhomes Ribbon Cutting

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We had the ribbon cutting for Water Street Town homes (WST) last Friday, May 15th. Julie Heise and Heather Martis did a great job with balloons, snacks and drinks for the event. There was a good turnout with members of the City Council, Redevelopment Commission and other officials there. The Mayor manned the big scissors to cut the ribbon and said a few words. Everything was positive! (Press Release here.)

All projects present challenges, but ones like these with multiple funding sources and their associated requirements are each unique. This one also involved multiple property owners, both public and private.

Above and beyond the general goals of providing work for our employees and not losing money, there are a myriad of other goals for a project like this. A few of these include: Downtown Revitalization, Work Force Housing, fulfilling comp plan goals and generally contributing to the health of downtown Plymouth. We participated in the two Marshall County housing studies, the Plymouth Comprehensive Plan committee and the Plymouth Zoning Review committee as we worked up to this. We’re still helping with the Zoning Review and have also joined the board of the Marshall County Community Development Corporation. All this to say we understand the issues.

We are pleased when we are able to do a project like this and also provide jobs for local subcontractors. A few of the local subcontractors for this project were: Langfeldt Excavating, Hundt Concrete, Banner Electric, MLE Roofing, Artizan Flooring, ARC Security, Rogers Landscaping and Quality Drywall. Scheduling has become the biggest issue with projects such as these, and having local access to local offices makes this easier. (Easier, not easy…)

Almost all municipalities are welcoming to developers at the elected official level during initial conversations, but it’s the follow-through that makes a difference. Nearly across the board, the various City of Plymouth departments understood the goals and attempted to make things easier to achieve them. This is not always the case. Water Street Townhomes had a sister project in Culver, Spirit Townhomes, that was also included in the Regional READI application, but after initial municipal interest, support evaporated. (A missed opportunity…) I would recommend talking to the City of Plymouth and Mayor Listenberger, if you’re considering a new development in Marshall County.

Water Street Townhomes is an example of urban renew at it’s best. It took two older homes and an underutilized parking lot on the back side of the main downtown street and created new commercial space (already filled), new housing that’s walkable to downtown merchants, entertainment, restaurants and the park, and took a poorly laid out parking lot which paid no taxes and turned it into a tax-paying development… while still adding 18 parking spaces and better stormwater control to the space. The parking lot was paved before returning it to the city. The adjacent alley was improved and new street lights were installed. Hopefully the project is an example of what can be done with public/private cooperation.

The internet trolls have been out in force, complaining that WST is not affordable housing (it was never advertised to be in an affordable housing program), it’s built in a flood plain (it’s not), it takes away public parking (it does not), it displaced existing residents (the existing houses were purchased privately at the seller’s asking prices), it’s ugly (Sorry… there’s no accounting for taste), it’s gentrification (okay, but maybe that’s the point?) and my favorite, for which I don’t even have a pithy retort, “We don’t want no new people”. It’s clear they know more than we do <sarcasm>, so there’s no point in addressing them. It’s still disheartening, when you’re trying to do something positive.

We’re still having some website issues. There were some pictures to include here, but they won’t upload. They may get added in a future update.

Personal Property Rights

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Land ownership has always been seen as a sign of permanence and investment in the community and in the political structures from municipality to county to state and all of the way up to the country as a whole. Article 1 of the Constitution pushed voting determination back to the States, and in the early elections, many States made land ownership a prerequisite to voting. Even now, investment in property is considered a goal. Individually, the dream of home ownership is a goal for most people. Municipalities tend to favor homeowners over renters, understanding that investing in a property in their jurisdiction brings community involvement, pride and often other types of investment.

That said, it’s disheartening to see the erosion of personal property rights. Zoning Ordinances by nature apply some of these restrictions for what’s perceived to be the greater good, but they attempt to guide by best practices, and are required by law to have public review, public input and an appeals process. This has been long established, but in the past, has been fairly lenient unless someone is being harmed. That process is becoming more intrusive and is coming after property owners in other ways, imposing taxes, fines and moratoriums.

Case #1 – Locally, there was discussion at a Culver Redevelopment Commission meeting and at the Downtown Strategies meeting about imposing fines on property owners in the commercial districts that do not have operating commercial businesses. (I mentioned this in a previous post, here.) Part of the argument given was, storage is not allowed in the commercial districts and a building just housing boxes without some from of retail offering was a violation of the Zoning Ordinance. I would have to assume, even if the building was purchased on a speculative basis, the owner would be happy to have an income producing business in there if they had that opportunity. The buildings in question are not being rented out as storage, but have the building owner’s own material there.

Case #2 – At the County level, there is an election flier floating around with a couple of lines that seems to be pretty contradictory:

  • Fought to Protect 12,000 Acres of Farm Ground from Industrial Solar.
  • Defended Property Owners from Gov’t Over-reach!

How is telling a farmer/landowner that they can only use their land to harvest corn & beans, in lieu of harvesting solar energy, not government over-reach?

Case #3 – And then there’s the current news headline from New York City, where the Mayor has decided to charge additional tax, gussied up as a pied-a-terre tax, on second homes worth over $5MM. This one and the Culver one seem awfully similar, since in both cases the building is zoned correctly, but the powers-that-be, don’t like the use or lack of use the current owner is pursuing. In NYC, what is that going to do to property values? I would have to assume every property currently valued at $5MM just dropped in value to $4.9MM. But wait, I forgot, the property owner has no control over what value is assessed. They’ll just lose money when the property sells…

In all of these cases, the stated goals are to promote the greater good. And as mentioned above, there is usually a required appeals process. In the cases above, there are no clear paths toward appeal. (What is the appeal process when a moratorium has been declared?) So the harmed individuals would be forced to pursue some form of civil remedy, which will undoubtedly be costly to the landowner and the governing body… but of course, the governing body is making demands and backing them up with other people’s money. The rule makers have no skin in the game…

On a grander scale, this is why our Founding Fathers set up the United States as a Republic and not a Democracy. Despite that, in the local trenches, government tends to lean more towards democracy, where politicians make decisions with their finger in the wind. Democracy tends to allow the majority to run over the minority. The individual property owner is always in the minority when it comes to how they want to use their property. That is very personal. It seems the individual property owner is falling victim to the vocal “majority” more and more.

Connecting Dots…

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110 North Main Street

A couple of weeks ago I posted about going to the initial Collaborate Culver meeting, where there was a discussion about missing businesses. I suggested the possibility of some incubator space for potential new businesses to try out Culver rather than going all in on a new store front. Geno Nannini made a stab at this years ago, by renovating the Masonic Lodge (Henry H. Culver Lodge No. 617 F. & A. M.) building at 110 North Main Street, subdividing the second floor lodge space into apartments and subdividing the first floor into individual offices/shops. A mix of small businesses, Churches and Not-for-Profits have occupied the spaces over time.

Last year I spoke to the owner of the former trailer park site at 515 West Jefferson Street in Culver about his idea of putting up small, temporary shop facilities. He indicated that he had spoke to town officials about making that happen, but he didn’t get much traction with them. I think at this time he’s in talks about a hotel on that site.

Bringing this full circle, Bremen has been talking about a project called Bremen Village Shops, which sounds very similar to what was suggested for the trailer park property. That project should be coming to fruition this summer. It is being done in conjunction with the Town of Bremen. They are working through logistics, since the property is currently owned by the Bremen Redevelopment Commission and there are legal issues with having them serve as a landlord.

If the Bremen Village Shops are successful, maybe the Town of Culver will warm to the idea and consider something similar for Culver, whether at 515 West Jefferson, or on another site. It’s an interesting concept and it seems like an creative way to get some new businesses to give Culver a chance. Meanwhile, if anyone is interested, I don’t think 100 North Main Street is completely full…

All the Talk of Housing Costs

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I listen to all the talk on how to reduce housing costs from government officials and am amused and disheartened by the lack of industry involvement and thus understanding of the industry by those proposing cures. Much of the discussion is similar to the other conversations on inflation. (I gave some thoughts on inflation here.) Locally, I have been involved with Jack Davis’s Faith Based Housing Committee, the UWMC Housing Matters group, MACOG’s Marshall County Housing Study, One Marshall County’s Housing & Infrastructure Committee and the newly formed Marshall County Community Development Corporation (MCCDC) of which I’m a board member. Back before this I was on Culver’s Entry Level Housing Committee and the MC Crossroads Housing Committee. In all of these meetings, I can only name one other person from the construction industry, no others from the development industry and only a two or three from the rental industry that have been included. The unfortunate thing is that the industry has been blamed in some of these meetings, making it harder to ask them to consider participation.

The general theory is that the reason for the higher housing costs is all due to scarcity. The study done for the Housing Matters group came up with a deficit of 1,300 dwelling units for Marshall County. There is no doubt that scarcity is a factor, but more housing isn’t the panacea. Assuming costs are totally contingent on demand assumes that housing building contractors are taking advantage and price gouging because they can. In most situations, that is not the case. There are underlying inflation costs that have caused material and labor costs to spiral up. This is a problem that travels up from the bottom of the material supply chain. At a certain point, if demand starts to be satisfied, the incentive to build new housing goes away.

There are couple of other effects that seem to be overlooked. The first of these is the increase in property values. It is often stated in these meetings, that more new housing will make existing housing stock more affordable. Sounds good right? Until you’re the existing homeowner hoping to profit from your home sale. If some of these plans are successful, some who have counted on their home’s value appreciation will see a reduction in their net worth. The second effect is how this will affect property taxes for the county and municipalities. These governmental entities, while understanding the challenge to potential homeowners, have benefited from the increase in property values. While this is tempered by homestead exemptions, it has still been a net benefit as commercial residential property is affected as well.

The bursting of the housing bubble in 2008 has contributed to this problem as well. As so often happens, the pendulum has swung from the easy credit days back then to credit tightening to theoretically prevent another bubble. Homeowners need to show more steady income. Commercial residential developers/builders have to do the same, meeting a higher income to debt service ratio to satisfy lenders.

Add to these things, all of the new energy codes, safety standards and zoning hurdles and you find that building new homes is not always an easy prospect. Locally, there are attempts underway to start a land bank, streamline processes and in some cases provide short-term, low-interest loans. On the national scale, there are ideas bandied about such as 50 year mortgages, releasing government land for home construction and making down payments on a home something you can take from and/or hold in your 401(k) plan. All are interesting ideas, but not necessarily things that will make an immediate difference or be proven to be correct responses quickly.

I don’t see this problem going away quickly. Some of the “solutions” may result in unintended consequences. As is often the case, it may be best to let the market figure it out over time, but to the extent that it can be solved externally, I don’t think it will happen without all the players around the same table.