13 May, 2024 18 18 Comments

Trying to Make Sense of Density

May 13, 2024 By 18 Comments

Worthing Place

Note: I’ve been involved with the Urban Land Institute (ULI) for close to 20 years now. It’s a wonderful organization with chapters throughout the world dedicated to real estate and land use. Over the years, I’ve been asked to work with ULI panels to help cities navigate issues and seize opportunities. I’ve had a chance to work in places like Winter Park, Tamarac, West Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale. Recently, the City of Deerfield Beach engaged ULI in a community wide discussion about density. I thought I’d share my talk since it focused on our experience with the “D” word in Delray Beach.

 

The story of density in my hometown Delray Beach can be told through the saga of one project: Worthing Place which is located on Atlantic Avenue in the heart of our downtown. My hope tonight is that the Delray story—what worked and what didn’t– can offer you some insights that might help your city as you move forward.

Worthing Place is a 6- story, 60-foot tall apartment building with some restaurants and shops on the ground floor. It is set back from the street and sits behind a small pocket park which has become a lively space to watch the hustle and bustle of a very busy downtown.

It features 217 units on about 2.4 acres, which works out to roughly 90 units per acre, or three times the current density allowed in our downtown.

The Delray Beach CRA assembled the property in the mid-90s with a goal of creating a mixed-use project that would replace blight with vibrancy. We believed that housing was an essential component to jumpstarting a downtown that had shown some signs of life after a very rough decade in which we experienced 40 percent vacancy and virtually no nightlife. You could have gone bowling on Atlantic Avenue in the 80s and not hit anything.

 

The RFP was awarded to a team of experienced local developers who agreed to build a public parking garage before breaking ground on the apartments and retail. That offer, to build a garage benefiting the public before building apartments, was seen as a key to the winning bid.

But the size of the project—it’s height and density—split the town into two warring factions.

The project was approved and the city was immediately hit with lawsuits that prevented the project from moving forward. The developers built the garage—as promised, but litigation meant that they could not build the actual project.

When I was elected in 2000, the commission I served on inherited the lawsuits—I believe there were six or seven of them—but we also inherited the division over growth and development that this project ignited in our city.

Delray Beach is a very special place—we guard our charm and strive to maintain the brand of being a village by the sea.

We don’t allow tall buildings, but we do fight over 3 and 4 story buildings and density is a very, very touchy subject.

Mindful of these dynamics and wanting to unify the community after the tough fight over Worthing Place, we decided as a city commission to bring the community together and create a downtown master plan.

We did a massive public awareness campaign to get as many stakeholders to the table for a series of charettes or public meetings where we could brainstorm, draw, share and learn together. Our goal was to plan for a sustainable downtown that managed to be vibrant while being respectful of property rights as well as the look and feel our town.

Our tagline for the effort was “Keeping the Charm” and that was the goal.

Mind you, that’s not an easy task for a city…my idea of charm or of a village by the sea may be very different from my neighbors. Some may want a vibrant, bustling village and others may want a sleepy village. But we tried to work together as a community to come up with a consensus vision and policies to preserve, protect and enhance our downtown.

We produced a large document…but if I had to boil it down to a single theme it would be this: “Design matters more than a random density number.” In cities, we often get hung up on dwelling units per acre. We should be thinking about how projects fit in to the fabric of our communities.

In the master plan process, we learned that density was needed to provide housing opportunities for people who wanted to live downtown, we learned that if we wanted mom and pop businesses to survive, we needed a certain amount of density to support those businesses and we learned that density was better than sprawl in terms of the environment.

But the key message was the importance of design and scale…new development needed to be attractive and ideally enhance the charm and character of our downtown.

What I’m describing is a great aspiration.  But it can be hard to achieve because design is subjective.

We came away from the Downtown Master Plan process unified—at least among the few hundred who showed up to participate. But when you have 65,000 people, a few hundred, while good, is not enough to sustain an effort to shape your downtown. So, we worked hard to promote the plan, to educate the public on why density– done well– was important for our community.

And for a while we succeeded.

The city won all the lawsuits relating to Worthing Place and the project got built. It was supposed to be the first mixed-use housing project downtown, but the litigation delayed things and it ended up being among the last to be built.

Many other projects— not nearly as tall and certainly not as dense— were built. There has been a massive amount of public and private investment. And it has paid off.

Downtown Delray has become a regional attraction, with over 100 restaurants, tens of thousands of weekly visitors and a very low vacancy rate.

But success comes with challenges.

Rents have increased from $5-$7 a square foot when I moved here in 1987 to as high as $165 a square foot for prime restaurant space. It’s difficult for mom-and-pop businesses to pay the rent.

When you experience success, it’s not uncommon to want to try and ratchet things back.

So, after I was termed out, a subsequent commission lowered the height limit to 54 feet, 35 feet on the avenue itself, and capped density at 30 units to the acre in most of downtown Delray. There are a few places in town where you can exceed that amount, but by and large density has been capped.

You don’t tend to cap things that you view as virtuous. If density was popular, it would be encouraged not capped. Besides, our language has changed—instead of encouraging density in strategic places to achieve civic goals, we are warning developers about density.

After spending a lot of time, money and effort trying to sell the virtues of density and great design—we stopped engaging residents on these topics and now every election cycle is about the evils of growth and development. We no longer talk about smart growth or good development; we only seem to talk about traffic and whether we have lost our charm.

Density has become a dirty word in a town that used it as a tool to become a national model for how to revitalize a downtown.

Now, I understand the sensitivities…I understand the frustration caused by congestion, even though we experience more traffic driving on multi-lane suburban streets than when we drive downtown where we can use our grid system to get around efficiently.

I am immensely proud of my city and what we were able to accomplish. But I also understand it is not everyone’s cup of tea. And I understand that change cuts both ways: it can be good, it can be not so good. But all in all, I think Delray did a nice job.

We don’t allow big buildings, especially when compared to our coastal neighbors, which allow heights more than twice as tall as we do.

Efforts have been made to limit massing and maintain the human scale that is our calling card. We narrowed US 1 in our downtown to make it more of a neighborhood and less of a highway. We improved pedestrian safety and we have created a year-round economy in what had once been a seasonal town.

 

But in many ways, even though others think we have done a good job, we are losing the argument.

City planners and new urbanists are often fans of Delray. I’m here, 17 years after being term limited, because ULI views Delray as a positive example.

But as the kids say when talking about relationships—it’s complicated.

When politicians look at our city and see their best chance of being elected as running against what has been achieved downtown because density was used wisely— something has gone awry.

So as Deerfield weighs its next move relative to density, growth and change…I would offer up Delray as a good comp. We are both a success story and a cautionary tale.

We succeeded because we revitalized what had been a declining downtown. The revitalization has stood the test of time—we survived the financial crisis, Covid, competition from other cities and changing tastes. I would argue that density done right—done gently as my friend Juan (Urban designer Juan Mullerat) would say–helps you build wonderful and memorable places.

I commend you for engaging with ULI and inviting the public into this process, much like we did when we crafted our Downtown Master Plan in 2001.

But I would urge you—from experience—to never stop engaging, educating, and learning together as a community. We stopped doing those things somewhere along the way…because after all politicians come and go. But the need to keep dreaming and implementing never goes away. That’s the beauty of cities. You are never done, especially if you get some kind of success. You can’t be complacent. Complacency is a killer.

As a former elected official, I know you can never please everyone. And you can really set your community back by trying. But you can and should take a long-term view and try and move the big rocks.

The best piece of advice I ever got was that elected office is a job to do, not to have.

You need to take some risks to move the needle and make things happen in your city. But you have to bring the community along with you…they have to buy-in and say yes. And they have to keep saying yes. That means a never-ending conversation about the future of your community. That’s the fun part.

I’m a fan of Deerfield Beach, I’m in the Cove for dinner, I love your beach and I used to have an office in town. So, I am rooting for you.

I’ll conclude by telling you what happened with Worthing Place.

It succeeded. It never became the blighted tenement that opponents feared would forever scar our downtown. Instead, it became a catalyst for activity and additional investment.

The restaurants downstairs have become popular spots…the apartments are coveted, and the garage is well-used and a money maker for the city. A few months ago, the company I work for, a family office, bought the building from BlackRock for over $100mm. So, you can see that the project that divided our town has a whole lot of value.

It’s a full circle moment for me and a major investment in our downtown for my company. I’d like to think that density —done well—created an ecosystem that remains an attractive place for people to live, work and play. Thank you for this opportunity and good luck with your wonderful city.

 

 

 

 

 

1 June, 2017 0 Comments

It Don’t Come Easy

June 1, 2017 By Leave a Comment

I spoke to an urban planning class at FAU last night.
Adjunct Professor Glenn Gromann invited me and I enjoy speaking to students so I said yes. (And it doesn’t hurt when the adjunct professor makes your book required reading…wink, I will work for book sales).
It’s not the first time I’ve had the privilege of speaking to college students. Usually I tell the story of modern Delray Beach taking them through the decisions, policies and leadership choices that brought Delray out of the dumps. We cover the ups and downs, the mistakes and triumphs and the rationales behind decisions that to some may seem counter-intuitive.

I don’t have any formal training in urban planning–but I do have real world experience. I am so interested in the subject that I have read everything I could get my hands on and listened to smart planners, architects, urbanists and good developers at every opportunity. I even created a few–by reaching out, by attending seminars, joining the Urban Land Institute, visiting Seaside, joining the Congress for New Urbanism and studying placemakers like Jane Jacobs and Delray’s own part-time resident Fred Kent, founder of the Project for Public Spaces.

I also understand the politics that go into moving an agenda forward–because change and new urbanism isn’t always embraced. Today, I find myself in the strange position of having to defend policies that clearly worked–that created vibrancy, value, quality of life, jobs, opportunities and future potential if we would just open our eyes to the possibilities. Often, I’m debating new residents who moved here attracted by what they saw (I suppose) but vehemently against everything else and resentful of those who played a role in building our town. It reminds me of the phrase: “I’m in the boat, pull up the ladder.” My main point to them: we aren’t done and we have a responsibility to the future to manage change and do it intelligently.
There are many planning and leadership principles to convey to tomorrow’s planners, developers, department heads and architects: the merits of new urbanism, the importance of visioning, the need to engage the community and the value of making investments. Every city needs to be able to provide running water and trash pickup but the cities that make a ruckus are those that do more: art, culture, dynamic downtowns, sports, festivals, food scenes etc.
We did that.
It took 20 years of hard work by a multitude of people. But it happened.
So I shared that journey. And as many times as I share the story, it never fails to move me. Because I know what it took and I have deep respect and admiration for the people who made it happen and I’m privileged and proud to tell their story and I suppose defend their efforts. Some previously important people (PIPS) go away, I’ve decided not too. It’s my town and I love it.
But I’ve started to add to the narrative. I’ve started to talk about what can go wrong. How cities can give back gains and how as aspiring planners or public administrators having great ideas, state of the art policies and stellar execution won’t be enough to make a lasting and permanent  difference.
In fact, you won’t be able to get to the policy part if you don’t understand politics. I shared how good ideas get squashed and how even sound policies suffocate if the wrong elected officials show up to stifle and or choke the life out of progress.
Students need to understand this. As citizens they need to know this and get involved. They need to vote. They need to run. They need to insist that elected officials serve them, not the other way around.

As prospective planners they need to know how corrosive “leadership” can impact their careers and if they go the private sector route they need to know how this can cost them. How it can break their spirits and their bank accounts.
As a result, they need to know that progress can be ephemeral and they need to be able to articulate to citizens why the planning principles they learn are good ways to build communities and manage growth.
But sadly, good planning principles often don’t cut it on their own.  You need to market those policies, constantly sell their rationales and educate voters as to why your plans and visions make sense.
Take for example, new urbanism or the newer “strong towns” movement. Both philosophies have sound thinking behind them and eloquent manifestos.
But…
It don’t come easy, as Ringo once  sang.
Students need to know that and prepare to engage the future communities they will serve.
Because you can guarantee that regardless of how much success you enjoy or how far you’ve come there will always be forces lining up to stop you and in some cases roll it all back.

We used to call it municipal math…30 years to build, two years to screw it all up, no guarantee you can get it back.
That’s the hardest lesson of all to learn and the most important.

21 January, 2016 1 Comment

On Teaching, Walkability & The Future

January 21, 2016 By 1 Comment

 

Streets like this one in Denver, just feel good.

Streets like this one in Denver, just feel good.

I’ve always had a desire to teach.

I think it correlates with a strong yearning to learn.

My early career was in the newspaper field, where your job boils down to learning about subjects and then sharing (reporting) what you’ve learned with your readers.

Working at a community newspaper is a dream job—if you discount the long hours, low wages and dim prospects for the future. As a young man I did—because the job itself is fascinating.

You get to write. You get to satisfy your curiosity by researching things you’re interested in. You to get meet interesting people and cover fascinating subjects; no two days are the same.

I’ve always liked the excitement of deadlines, it focuses you and you have to produce, which is a cool way to work. When everybody around you is on a similar deadline, there’s an energy in the room that is hard to describe.

I would imagine that teaching has a similar adrenaline rush. If you’re in the flow and connecting with your audience there’s just nothing like it. My daughter is a brand new teacher in Tampa—I plan to talk to her about what she feels when she’s working with students.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that when a friend called and asked if I would speak to his urban planning class at FAU—I jumped at the chance.

Still, it’s nerve wracking to walk into a room full of strangers; most especially young people who are beginning to look even younger to me with every passing year.

Can you connect? Can you relate? Do I have anything to teach them? And what can I learn from all these young minds?

We talked about how cities evolve and transform– one of my favorite subjects.

I love to tell the Delray story, because I think we are a good case study and that past leaders and city staff used sound strategies for over 20 years to achieve success. Success, not perfection.

For example, we went from 35 percent vacancy and little going on downtown in the 80s to a glowing feature story in the Wall Street Journal last week.

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/a-sunny-escape-3-perfect-days-in-delray-beach-florida-1452796534-lMyQjAxMTE2NzExNjIxMzY0Wj

We talked a lot about Boca too.

But the best part is to hear from future planners, urban designers, developers and architects.

What do they see? What do they expect and want from cities? Here’s a few takeaways from an admittedly small sample, but the sentiments seem to match surveys I’ve seen.

Affordability—not just in housing but also reasonable costs for food and entertainment.

Mobility—The young aren’t car centric. Study after study show that millennials are delaying getting driver’s licenses, don’t feel a strong desire to own a car and appreciate and seek out walkable environments. They also believe in services such as Uber and Lyft and understand that driverless cars will change our urban environments.

Environmentally Sensitive and Realistic—They know that Florida is a popular place and that even if  “they want their own slice of heaven” i.e. a suburban home on ½ acre they know sprawl is bad for the environment and that we may need to grow vertically rather than sprawl to accommodate a growing populace.

Design Savvy—My small sample of future urban professionals were keen on good architecture and design. They appreciate art and culture, good looking buildings and a mix of uses.

They also talked about wanting their cities to be safe, diverse and chock full of amenities.

A few of the students have been interning in Delray. I hope that many end up staying here after they graduate FAU.

As for me, I kind of wish I was 20-something again, so I can experience it all again. The future is exciting indeed.

 

2 February, 2015 2 2 Comments

Density, Design, Planning & Values

February 2, 2015 By 2 Comments

Greetings

Delray Beach is the first city to ever win the prestigious John C. Nolen Award which recognizes responsible, smart growth.

The award is a big deal.

We won because over a long period of time the public and private sectors worked together on a series of citizen led visions—namely Visions 2000 and the Downtown Master Plan. We had vision. We had passion. We had political will and we stayed focused on the big picture.

As a result, Delray Beach changed. Some people liked what happened. Some people hated it. But there’s little argument that the downtown went from sleepy to vibrant.

Personally,  I  think we have a great downtown.

Not a perfect downtown. Not a downtown devoid of problems or annoyances, but a downtown enjoyed by thousands; a downtown that has been a source of great civic pride.

But we didn’t celebrate when we won the Nolen Award. We should have, but we didn’t.

We should have taken the time to invite our residents, new and long time, to mark the occasion. We should have shown before and after pictures and explained the rationale behind the innovative strategies, policies, risks and investments that were made to transform Delray.

It was a teachable moment and a chance to thank people for their involvement in making it happen. But we passed. And that’s a shame because those civic pride moments are important if we are serious about building community.

The central business district in our village by the sea survived the worst recession since the Great Depression better than just about any other city you can name.

Sure, there was pain. But you could have stood on Atlantic Avenue at the height of the financial crisis and not known that there was a global meltdown occurring.

We didn’t have major vacancies. The streets were alive, the restaurants were full and property values didn’t plummet like they did in other cities. Downtown proved to be an enduring economic engine, providing needed jobs and tax revenues.

In fact, downtown sales increased 35 percent from $175 million in 2008 to $237 million in 2013, according to the Florida Department of Revenue.

“That is about three times more than the growth Palm Beach County saw, “reported the Sun-Sentinel.

Did this happen by accident? Did it happen because we planned poorly? Was it all, dumb luck?

Did nobody other than greedy developers benefit?

No.

No.

No.

And no.

It wasn’t an accident. It was planned and at every step along the way there was an opportunity for public input and debate.

The revitalization of Atlantic Avenue dates to 1984 when Mayor Doak Campbell convened the Atlantic Avenue Task Force because the State DOT, in its infinite wisdom, wanted to widen East Atlantic Avenue to speed hurricane evacuation.

If that had occurred, there would have been no downtown to save, take back, enjoy or savor.

We would have had a highway, not a main street.

Visions 2000 picked up where the Task Force left off and citizens got together and voted to tax themselves to beautify their town.

The Visions 2000 process led to the $21.5 million Decade of Excellence Bond issue, which passed overwhelmingly in 1989. Shortly thereafter, we saw an old school transformed into a cultural arts center and the addition of paver bricks, decorative lighting and landscaping. Thanks to the CRA that beautification extended to the Interstate over the years and to side streets as well.

With the public commitment to beautification and progress evident, the private sector started to invest. Some of these investors were merchants, some were homeowners, some were small business owners and some were developers. Many people made money, but more than a few didn’t. Even developers lose and when they lose, they tend to lose big.

Now I hear some people who ought to know better question how the public has benefitted from all of this….and I have to scratch my head because I think the value is self-evident and abundant. But if we must, here we go: we saw crime rates plummet, property values increase, jobs created and quality of life and place get better. All of these real and intrinsic benefits were a direct result of smart, responsible growth.

Yes there are impacts. There’s traffic and there’s noise and most of the time we can no longer pull right up to The Green Owl and find a space. Sometimes we have to walk a few yards, sometimes half a block. That’s Ok, because I’d rather have traffic, than no traffic. And I’d rather live in a town with a lively downtown than a dead one; I’ve lived in both and I prefer vibrancy. I don’t think I’m alone.

So yeah…there are benefits and impacts. I get it.  And I understand that there are people who miss the “old Delray”, but unless your colonial Williamsburg or Charleston, you can count on change happening. Even Charleston has hired new urbanist Andres Duany to help navigate development pressures. But if we can’t stop change, and we shouldn’t want to, can we manage it? I think we can and I think we have. We can also focus on some positives…there has to be things we aspire to have, not just prevent.

A friend of mine lives in the Lake Ida neighborhood.  He bought his house about 14 years ago for a little under $200,000. Today, he can get over a million dollars. Some homes in Lake Ida are selling for over $2 million. Not all are on the lake either. Lake Ida is a beautiful neighborhood but with all due respect to my friends in Lake Ida, if they lived adjacent to a dead main street I’m fairly certain their homes would be worth far less money.

Could it be that home values spiked because Lake Ida residents can take a golf cart and be in a rocking downtown in a few minutes?

Just taking a guess, but I would venture yes.

After the Decade of Excellence was successfully implemented, the CRA issued an RFP for block 77, a blighted section of downtown at Atlantic and First.

Worthing Place was awarded the bid and the town went bonkers; split between those who feared density and what they were sure would be a low grade “tenement” and those who thought that having residents living downtown would benefit mom and pop retailers and make the downtown a safer, more vibrant place.

I ran for office a year after the project was approved—six stories and 93 units to the acre and inherited a series of lawsuits filed by Tom Worrell, then owner of The Sundy House.

At that time, I had never met Mr. Worrell, even though I had worked for nearly a decade for one of his newspapers. I only met him when he introduced himself to me at a ribbon cutting on South Swinton.

I tried to broker an end to the suits—the developers were willing to chop off units and a floor or two, but we couldn’t quite get there, despite a long day of shuttle diplomacy with the parties parked in different rooms at Old School Square.

The city won the suits, but the developers missed the market and instead of being the first project out of the ground, they were among the last to build and only after they constructed the Federspiel Garage as they had promised to do.

I was shaken by the division I had seen over that project and it prompted me and others to create a process to create a downtown master plan and launch a communitywide conversation about what we wanted to see happen to our downtown.

Mayor Dave Schmidt– a terrific leader– enabled me to run with the process and I co-chaired the initiative along with Chuck Ridley, a neighborhood civic leader. Together, with hundreds and hundreds of residents, we redefined the downtown to include everything from A1 A to the Interstate. We felt it important– and yes historic– to include the West Atlantic corridor in our planning area.

I think the process was terrific. The Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council did a remarkable job and the effort attracted hundreds to weigh in– so many that we had to shut the doors late at night at the temporary studios on Swinton to give the architects, planners and urban designers a chance to draw. We were amazed and gratified at how many people came out to talk about their ideas for their downtown. It was a citizen driven plan and it was a damn good one.

One of the enduring lessons that came from the process was that design mattered more than density. And that it was possible to change and keep our charm, a lesson we ought to be thinking about today. We learned not to fear density, but to see it as a tool for creating vibrancy and sustainability.

In fact, generating density downtown was a goal, because we felt we couldn’t have a safe or sustainable downtown without it.

Here’s an excerpt from the plan:

“In order to maintain the overall “Village Atmosphere” of the

City, but at the same time create enough density to encourage

a variety of local services and a more balanced mix of

retail in downtown, the Master Plan’s recommendation in all

the reviewed cases consistently supports higher densities

within the CRA’s downtown district, especially in the four

blocks north and south of the Avenue. It is this Plan’s additional

recommendation to include a minimum density

requirement in the zoning code. Within the downtown area,

low, suburban densities will cause more harm than slightly

higher ones. Within a downtown area, density is directly

associated with the health and success of downtown.”

Well…times have changed and I get that.

Strategies have to change as well. But certain fundamentals should never change.

Engaging the public and stakeholders should be sacrosanct. That’s what builds community. If we want to be ignored, we got Washington D.C. to blow us off –they’ve been ignoring us for years.

I want my commission to talk to people and get a range of opinion before they change something important.  Yes, I’ve heard the arguments, how the commission gets nothing but complaints about growth and development. I got them too. But I also heard and continue to hear from a great many people who love what happened downtown and would like to see more smart growth in strategic areas. I hear from entrepreneurs on a daily basis who would love to have their offices downtown and from others who wish they could afford to live downtown so they can walk or bike ride to services, restaurants, stores and cultural venues. I also hear from people who want jobs and students who would like to come home after college and work in Delray.

Sadly, many of these people don’t write commissioners and don’t speak up at the microphone at City Hall. They should.

But whether they show up or not, we have an obligation to consider their opinions and needs as well. I once cast a regrettable vote against a neighborhood plan when a group of irate people showed up at the last minute to protest. Mayor Schmidt glared at me and told me that the group didn’t represent the majority of the neighborhood. I should have known better but I didn’t make that mistake again. I resolved from that evening on to support good projects and vote against bad ones.

I think downtown is more art than science, so I like policies that enable commissioners to kill bad projects and make good deals happen, even if they need a little relief to make it work. We called it conditional use, which before it was wrongfully demonized, did a whole lot of good.

Conditional use killed a bad hotel project on A1A and it killed the first version of Atlantic Plaza. It also enabled City Walk and Ocean City Lofts to be built and the code allowed us to get the Seagate Hotel built.

I think those are nice projects, you may or may not agree.

But conditional use is not the same thing as a waiver or a variance. Waivers and variances were never granted for height and density. Never.

I think giving your policymakers discretion is a good thing. If they make mistakes—and they will—vote them out, especially if you think those mistakes were dishonest ones fueled by campaign contributions or favors. But making downtown codes prescriptive won’t give you better designs…and neither will lopping off floors. It will, however, stifle creativity.

Few people, even professionals, can tell the difference between a 54 foot building and a 60 foot building when they walk by.

So why care?

Well on Feb. 3,  there will be a first reading on new rules governing our downtown.

I see the downtown as easily Delray’s biggest, most unique asset; as valuable as the beach.

Lots of cities have beaches; there are very few Atlantic Avenues or Pineapple Groves.

As a recent lunch partner told me—“downtown is magic. It’s like The Beatles, it just feels good.”

Well, you don’t mess with The Beatles and you shouldn’t mess with the downtown either, not without a whole lot of analysis, input and dialogue.

Last week, I read the umpteenth version of the suggested changes…the ones on the city’s website don’t match what I saw on the Treasure Coast’s website. If you wonder if you missed the charrette to discuss these changes, don’t worry– there wasn’t a charrette to miss. The powers that be will tell you there was ample time to weigh in during commission meetings or presentations to the alphabet soup of boards we have in Delray. But in my opinion, this was not an inclusive planning process. Not even close. That’s a shame, because that’s part of our DNA.

Yes, we brought back Treasure Coast for this exercise and they have said on the record that they didn’t think our codes were broken. In fact, they take pride in Delray and they should. They nominated us for the Nolen Award because we were one of the few cities that stuck to our guns and had the political will to implement the people’s vision.

But the changes to the code that I see trouble me.

As mentioned, we skipped the master plan process; also known as public input.

I’m not sure we took the advice of Treasure Coast and I’m quite certain we ignored a lot of the advice of the experts that came to town to discuss density, design, parking, housing trends etc.

Treasure Coast put together a great speaker series, with the best thought leaders on the planet, coming to Delray. But I sure wish we had taken their advice and I wish this process included more input from the public because I don’t think that even the smartest elected officials have all the answers. In fact, I think the smartest elected officials understand that and then seek input and collaboration.

I don’t care whether our height limit is 60 feet or 54 feet. But I do think four stories will restrict our ability to get better designed projects and I think it will hinder, certainly not help office development, which we need desperately. To be honest, we are all guessing here, because there has not been any economic analysis performed, to my knowledge at least.

I don’t think putting a hard cap on density is smart public policy. I think there are strategic areas where you want to see density. I know saying “Delray is the incentive” is an applause line, but guess what, we may need incentives to get some things we desire. Incentives are tools that can be used to land good projects. The best public policy is aspirational and seeks to create something, not prevent it.

I think well designed projects trump density in importance, I think density gives you a chance for some level of affordability (giving young professionals an opportunity to live downtown) and I think it is better for the environment. I also think density gives independent retailers a chance at survival.

Stricter height limits on Atlantic Avenue make sense to me, but I think we should have created a transfer of development rights program, so that developers could have purchased those air rights to compensate property owners and maybe make the city a few bucks so we can pay our cops, firefighters and general employees.

My college economics class is a dusty memory, but it seems when you create scarcity one of two things can happen.

You either devalue property because you have new restrictions to abide by—which may concern an owner and should concern us as taxpayers since we rely on property taxes and higher valuations to pay for services– or you increase the values because now  you’ve  created scarcity.

Will we see commercial rents continue to climb as a result?

If so, will we lose the mom and pop retailer? We are already seeing the nationals come to town.

Will capping density forever hinder affordability downtown, robbing our CBD of young people who may want to live there before buying a single family home?

We needed an inclusive and deliberative process that allowed us to hash out where we are and where we want to go: we didn’t get one. We needed more study and analysis too.

We missed a chance to gather, talk, study and unify. That’s what towns pay Treasure Coast to do. It’s a worthy investment.

We paid for a form based code. But we didn’t get one.

A form based code, by its very definition, puts a premium on design not numbers. But we went right back to the numbers and we have tied the hands of future investors and policymakers.

I hear the arguments and I respect them. I truly do. This town has been damaged by some votes that left a tremendous stench. These changes will certainly disrupt those situations, but the cost is discretion and an ability to land a good project that may need some flexibility to work.

I witnessed a vote on a project in the southwest neighborhood that during my tenure we embraced because it was an opportunity to introduce middle class housing into a neighborhood that wanted it and needed it.  All across the country, cities were getting away from concentrating poverty. But when a subsequent commission approved a vastly different version of the project over the objections of citizens, staff, advisory boards, the CRA etc., I was literally nauseated. I got in my car and drove and drove and drove. I felt we had lost Delray Beach that night.

I understand wanting to stop that. I really do.

But I’m also concerned that future elected officials won’t have the discretion to make good projects happen.  And a hard cap on density, with no regard to use or design and no bonus program, is deeply problematic.

We’ve labeled our codes antiquated and our master plan dated—instead of appreciating that they built a pretty nice place and a whole lot of value.

If you tell people that you want to make something better; they are all ears. They’re in. But if you tell them that policies they took pride in were ruinous and that  you are here to save us, you begin to lose people who are proud of Delray.  Your “fix” begins to feel punitive and corrective.

We should ask Treasure Coast what they think of this process and its outcomes—give them diplomatic immunity and allow them to answer. Treasure Coast isn’t afraid of density, they know it’s all about design, use and urbanism. Bring back the experts we saw during the lecture series and see what they think. And next time we take a look at the rules—and there will be a next time– we should go back to the old way—citizen driven planning.

It works pretty well.  Just take a look around.