Recipe for conflict. Every. Single. Time.
Consider the following…
-When the CRA was founded in 1985, the total property value of the district was $245 million, today it is more than $1.6 billion and growing.
-In recent years, the CRA has received more than $6 million from the county annually in tax increment funding contributions; over the last three decades the total from the county is over $60 million. That’s funding that almost surely would have been spent outside the city if it didn’t go to our CRA.
–Over the years, our CRA has reinvested over $100 million in local TIF revenues in our city. The money has been spent on infrastructure, capital improvements, parking facilities, affordable housing, beautification efforts, economic development initiatives, land acquisition (turning unproductive property into uses that often produce jobs) and arts and culture that drive more jobs, tax revenues and quality of life. Signature projects include: the beautification of Northwest and Southwest 5th Avenue, Atlantic Grove, the Fairfield Inn, The Hyatt, Old School Square, the Delray Beach Public Library, Spady Museum, South County Courthouse (land acquisition), Worthing Place, the Downtown Master Plan, improvements to U.S. 1 and the new Uptown Delray project which includes plans for a long sought neighborhood grocery.
–From the Green Market and Municipal Tennis Stadium to historic preservation efforts and the Community Land Trust, the CRA has been an integral part of Delray’s fabric.
The list of achievements, public private partnerships, site development assistance, façade improvements and business grants goes on and on.
In other words, it takes a village to build a village.
And this village would not be nearly the same without its CRA. It has been far and away our best economic development tool and has only gotten more effective along the way.
CRA monies have always complemented the city’s budget, including paying for police officers to make our city’s downtown clean and safe and funding for planning and engineering initiatives that built a pretty cool city.
For most of the past 20 years, the CRA has been focused on the West Atlantic corridor and neighborhoods north and south of the avenue and east of 95.
More than $60 million has been spent on sidewalks, water pressure improvements, beautification, housing, lighting, parks, plazas and economic development initiatives.
This wasn’t a heroic contribution; it was the right thing to do. But it should be acknowledged as well.
Public spending should be directed where the needs are but this was not always the case in Delray Beach.
As late as the 1980s, large parts of the central business district suffered from blighted conditions and disinvestment. Pineapple Grove was an idea, but it was pretty decrepit when it was hatched. And that’s a compliment.
When I was elected to the City Commission in 2000, there were still a few unpaved streets in our southwest neighborhoods. Many blocks did not have good water pressure, sidewalks or lighting.
But there was a whole lot of vision and a lot of dedicated people working together on what became known as the Southwest Plan. When the citizen driven plan was completed and adopted by the city, spending by the city and the CRA was earmarked to bring the plan to life. And while much was done—see the above millions invested—it was clear that even more needed to be done to improve neighborhoods and to break the cycle of poverty that gripped many families in our city.
Beacon Programs—providing wrap around social, educational and health services—were created, a Boys and Girls Club opened with the invaluable help of Mayor Tom Lynch and former CRA member Marc DeBaptiste, the Village Academy opened and was expanded to cover pre-K through 12th grade and a Community Land Trust was established to add much needed housing in underserved neighborhoods.
It’s a remarkable story of a community, a city and a CRA working together.
In community building, one of the first lessons you learn is that you are never “done.”
There is always more to do: more progress to be made, more challenges to overcome and more opportunities to seize.
That seems to be a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised as you make progress how many people want cities to declare victory and stop investing. That’s a mistake, complacency is a killer.
Usually, the argument is that spending needs to be directed elsewhere—and many times it does. But community building is not a zero-sum game.
You can and should invest in multiple neighborhoods. It’s not a choice between East Atlantic and West Atlantic or between the downtown and Congress Avenue as some elected officials wrongly claim. Sure, you need priorities, but that doesn’t mean that you neglect one part of your town in favor of another—especially when your city is interconnected and certain neighborhoods provide the fuel and the funding to ensure that needier neighborhoods can receive what they need.
A friend has pointed out to me that it is impossible to improve blighted residential neighborhoods without the cash generated by successful commercial development.
Residential neighborhoods—especially ones that have problems—do not generate the tax dollars to do the job. But successful downtowns do. And because East Atlantic has performed so well, TIF dollars generated as a result can be and have been (for a long time now) used to fund improvements to West Atlantic and adjoining neighborhoods.
The key to doing more is to keep your pump healthy—to maintain your focus on all parts of your downtown and to create new economic drivers such as Congress Avenue, US 1 and the four corners of Atlantic Avenue and Military Trail.
The other key is to support, collaborate with and sharpen your economic development agencies.
Schools, quality health care, a strong business community, the arts, recreation and open space are also critical components—along with safe streets and a city government that provides services efficiently.
If that sounds like a lot, it is. Remember, you are never done and if you think you are, complacency or smugness will bite you.
