Thursday, September 21, 2006
Things Must Be Really Bad in Birmingham
Pittsburgh has sent delegations of elected officials and civic leaders on junkets to other cities (most recently Charlotte and Minneapolis) in order to learn “best practices” and apply them here. This week the City played host to a similar group from Birmingham, Alabama and an article in the Birmingham News notes that Pittsburgh was the latest in a string of visits by the group, following St. Louis, Baltimore, Charlotte, and Nashville.
What could Birmingham, whose metro area has grown 3.5 percent since 2000, learn from Pittsburgh, where population has fallen 1.8 percent since then? Some of the observations published in the article surprised us. Here are some of the quotes from the visitors:
“One thing I learned is that Pittsburgh gets lots of support from the state and county…” If the person was referring to the massive economic development dollars or RAD taxes funneled in to help the City, they are correct. But such a statement is a stark contrast to what City officials have professed over the years and as the City entered into distressed status and oversight. Calls for a commuter tax or for the state to take over debt and pension obligations were among the few requests from the City.
“[The group] visited a former department store that is being converted into a condominium complex”. Here’s one practice we hope the folks in Birmingham don’t embrace—to wit: decide that shopping will save Downtown, pour large sums of taxpayer money into a store that has carbon copies in the suburbs where there is free parking, give it a few years, watch the store close, blame the store closing on the failure to do even more government-directed development, and then declare the structure a success when a developer decides to convert it into housing. But it might happen since the article noted that “business and political leaders who attended said they envision Birmingham turning some of its abandoned brownfield industrial sites into thriving commercial properties”.
One attendee noted that “I hope our political leaders paid attention to how they do things in Pittsburgh”. If they do, keep an eye out for Birmingham: in a few years, they may have new stadiums, a new convention center, government-subsidized retail, and flagging population, no private sector job growth, be financially distressed, and more dependent than ever for the willingness of state and county taxpayers to underwrite their government. Maybe Birmingham would do better to focus on Nashville and Charlotte as examples of how to do things better.
What could Birmingham, whose metro area has grown 3.5 percent since 2000, learn from Pittsburgh, where population has fallen 1.8 percent since then? Some of the observations published in the article surprised us. Here are some of the quotes from the visitors:
“One thing I learned is that Pittsburgh gets lots of support from the state and county…” If the person was referring to the massive economic development dollars or RAD taxes funneled in to help the City, they are correct. But such a statement is a stark contrast to what City officials have professed over the years and as the City entered into distressed status and oversight. Calls for a commuter tax or for the state to take over debt and pension obligations were among the few requests from the City.
“[The group] visited a former department store that is being converted into a condominium complex”. Here’s one practice we hope the folks in Birmingham don’t embrace—to wit: decide that shopping will save Downtown, pour large sums of taxpayer money into a store that has carbon copies in the suburbs where there is free parking, give it a few years, watch the store close, blame the store closing on the failure to do even more government-directed development, and then declare the structure a success when a developer decides to convert it into housing. But it might happen since the article noted that “business and political leaders who attended said they envision Birmingham turning some of its abandoned brownfield industrial sites into thriving commercial properties”.
One attendee noted that “I hope our political leaders paid attention to how they do things in Pittsburgh”. If they do, keep an eye out for Birmingham: in a few years, they may have new stadiums, a new convention center, government-subsidized retail, and flagging population, no private sector job growth, be financially distressed, and more dependent than ever for the willingness of state and county taxpayers to underwrite their government. Maybe Birmingham would do better to focus on Nashville and Charlotte as examples of how to do things better.
