The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership favors using proceeds from the proposed Downtown Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) tax diversion to fund office conversions, the Tribune-Review reports.
As the thinking has been now for a number of years, older Downtown office buildings are losing out to newer, amenity-rich office buildings. It’s that “flight-to-quality” theory.
And because office-to-residential conversions are expensive, they need a taxpayer-funded leg up, goes the continuing mantra.
But it remains beyond us why taxpayers should ride to the rescue of building owners who failed to keep their office buildings attractive enough for lease-holders and now are expected to help pay for the conversion to housing.
“But it’s expensive!” those owners wail. “It’s cost-prohibitive without taxpayer subsidies!” the crafty developers cry. “It’s how business is done these days!” the pols exhort, pooh-poohing objectors as either “naïve,” “naysayers” or both.
But, and yet again, we are forced to remind, that’s not the responsibility of taxpayers at large. Building owners who failed should not be rewarded for their failures. And if the conversions from offices to residential units are “cost-prohibitive,” the marketplace is saying they should not be converted.
It’s way past time to stop treating taxpayers as venture capitalists for those pols and their favored developers seeking to command the market in their vision – visions that generally are doomed to failure.
So, what’s to be done with these buildings? Either the owners should pay the full cost of their repurposing or, if they can’t swing it, pay for the full cost of their demolition and the land be put up for sale to make it available for private developers to build something new – on their own dime.
The City of Pittsburgh has approved the TRID. Allegheny County Council and Pittsburgh Public Schools continue to consider it. Considering this constant suckling at the taxpayer teat is making taxpayers quite sore, those pols yet to make their decision should pause to consider just how sore those taxpayers will be on their next Election Day.
Along that same line, a wag with whom we regularly converse likens the current command-the-marketplace situation as “just another happy day in the Land of Zero Growth.”
“The fact is that these clueless souls keep telling us that more government intervention will cure the problems created by the previous rounds of government intervention.
“But more to the point, why does anyone still believe any of this rubbish?
“Failure isn’t just an option, it is a way of life around here,” Mr. Wag notes.
And, “Why does the media keep pushing these demonstrably failed policies?” he asks. “Because they are just as clueless as the politicians who love giving away other people’s money.”
As one example, he cities a local television station’s “regional business show.”
“Every single story either involves a not-for-profit organization or a government subsidy program,” the correspondent says.
“In 1970, the City of Pittsburgh was the third-largest corporate headquarters city in the nation,” he reminds. “The place has degenerated to the point that the largest employer in the region, and the state, is UPMC, a not-for-profit organization. Yet no one bothers to mention that small detail.
“The economy around here has been circling the bowl for decades. At what point are these woke fools going to wake up?”
Not, my faithful correspondent, until the Political-Developer Complex that has been robbing taxpayers blind for decades to cover up their command market malarkey of interventionist lies is denied access to the public purse and their warped view of “public purpose” public policy – self-serving and self-dealing by any standard — is scuttled once and for all.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
