Delay on TIF/W&R hearing

QueSi2Opie · Post by **QueSi2Opie** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 9:56 pm

Business Journal...

TIF Commission postpones Waddell hearings
Jim Davis
Staff Writer

On Wednesday, the Tax Increment Financing Commission of Kansas City postponed for a week the hearings on a plan to bring Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. to One Kansas City Place.

Andi Udris, CEO of the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City, which staffs the TIF Commission, said he needs more time to negotiate a financing plan. Talks involve officials from the city and EDC, as well as representatives of Overland Park-based Waddell & Reed (NYSE: WDR) and One Kansas City Place's owners, Udris said.

Timing is crucial, he said, adding that he and other participants in the talks can't wait until the TIF Commission's next regular meeting on Dec. 10.

The special hearing will take place Nov. 19 at 8 a.m. in the EDC's conference room on the second floor of 10 Petticoat Lane.

Joe Serviss, a TIF Commission member who helped begin the city's pursuit of Waddell & Reed when he was Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes' chief of staff, said the delay was justified.

Serviss called Waddell & Reed "the biggest of the big" and said that bringing the mutual fund company's 650 high-paying headquarters jobs to Downtown would boost Barnes' downtown revitalization campaign.

Also at its meeting, the TIF Commission approved a plan to post Internet updates on the commission's response to Kansas City Auditor Mark Funkhouser's recent audit. Funkhouser criticized the commission for inadequate accounting records and lax staffing procedures.

Information will be posted on the EDC's Web site.

The TIF Commission also approved an increased financing request for the parking garage at Plaza Colonnade, an office building under construction south of the Country Club Plaza that will include a branch of the Kansas City Public Library. The TIF-backed garage's size has increased to 1,280 spaces from 1,125.

GRID · Post by **GRID** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 10:42 pm

Serviss called Waddell & Reed "the biggest of the big".

No, BLOCK would be "the biggest of the big".

KCPowercat · Post by **KCPowercat** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 10:54 pm

that's exactly what I thought when reading that.....do we read in that Block is dead and now W&R is the biggest?

trailerkid · Post by **trailerkid** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 1:06 am

No...don't read anything into it...it's similar to saying that Bass Pro is a homerun tenant for downtown. It's just more soundbyte speak trying to sell us.

KCPowercat · Post by **KCPowercat** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:43 am

sounds like we might be less than a week or 2 away from either landing W&R or not......

trailerkid · Post by **trailerkid** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 4:03 pm

I'm getting nervous and have a bad feeling about the Jones Store block's interaction within this project. Here are the two options which I hope don't happen...

1. Plan for the park/underground parking go through and W&R come downtown.
2. Plan for condos/retail/parking goes through and W&R don't come downtown.

Here's what I wish happens, but seems a bit unlikely considering how egotistical all these business dudes are...

3. Plan for the condos/retail/parking goes through and W&R come downtown using the development for parking.

And here's what I hope to God almighty doesn't happen....

4. W&R don't come downtown and Jones Store sits empty for another 5 years while real estate people battle over its future.

KCPowercat · Post by **KCPowercat** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 4:29 pm

3 is what everybody wants and should be doable....gets the better plan done and hooks up Bridges with W&R.....

now we shall see if they can agree on something

tat2kc · Post by **tat2kc** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:10 pm

3 would be ideal. My fear is that if Tower Properties gets the block, W&R may not come downtown and then it'll sit empty. This developmet project is dependent on W&R. The Time Equities plan is not dependent on any specific company coming down. They'll build the garage and the retail and housing regardless of who might or might not move downtown.

carfreekc · Post by **carfreekc** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:33 pm

tat2kc wrote:3 would be ideal.

(#3 was "Plan for the condos/retail/parking goes through and W&R come downtown using the development for parking.")

What would be ideal is the parking gets built by the developer using their own damn money instead of public subsidies through TIF. Seems like every parking garage goes for TIF any more. How convenient.

Turn it into a carsharing hub in connection with transit, and then maybe TIF would be used more appropriately for a public benefit.

tat2kc · Post by **tat2kc** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:51 pm

In theory, I'd agree with you, except: parking spaces downtown cost in excess of $10,000 per space. The only way to add parking downtown is to build a garage. In the suburbs, they can pave acres of land. We can't do that downtown. People complain about the parking lot at Sunfresh in Westport, but the lot was the only way to provide adequate parking for the shopping center. If we added several blocks of parking, we'd have a nasty mess downtown. Better public transit would ease the parking issue, but we don't have that. There is no way in hell that a developer can build parking at a competitive cost compared to the suburbs. TIF is not the ideal way, but it does help level the playing field somewhat. A 2,000 space garage, at $10,000 a space would not be cost effective.

carfreekc · Post by **carfreekc** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 10:09 pm

tat2kc wrote:In theory, I'd agree with you, except: parking spaces downtown cost in excess of $10,000 per space. The only way to add parking downtown is to build a garage. In the suburbs, they can pave acres of land. We can't do that downtown. People complain about the parking lot at Sunfresh in Westport, but the lot was the only way to provide adequate parking for the shopping center. If we added several blocks of parking, we'd have a nasty mess downtown. Better public transit would ease the parking issue, but we don't have that. There is no way in hell that a developer can build parking at a competitive cost compared to the suburbs. TIF is not the ideal way, but it does help level the playing field somewhat. A 2,000 space garage, at $10,000 a space would not be cost effective.

In the suburbs, they end up building more miles of roads to connect all the acres of land. And guess what--those roads are subsidized, too. It's expensive to build all that parking in the suburbs, just in different ways that aren't as immediately visible.

Outside of ideal (which, I know I went on a bit of a tangent, but as long as I was thinking 'ideal'...), I do have a problem in general with using TIF for parking garages when it takes money from transit to do so (e.g. from the city fund for mass transit for that TIF). And we will never have better public transit, especially downtown, if we keep building parking garages for every person who might possibly want to drive his/her car downtown.

I guess I would feel better if we heard more about a strategic, integrated overall plan for addressing parking--and transit--downtown, together, rather than this piecemeal, project-by-project approach. It's at least somewhat encouraging that the new city manager is talking about doing that with the performing arts center/Bartle.

Ok, .

tat2kc · Post by **tat2kc** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 8:12 am

I agree with you 100%. I actually think that there is plenty of parking downtown. People are just too damn lazy to walk 3 or blocks. I guess the friction from their big ass thighs rubbing together might be a fire hazard.

FangKC · Post by **FangKC** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 11:41 pm

The news media constantly reports how fat Americans are getting, and that they need to exercise more. Yet, the way we build cities removes all opportunity for exercise--like having to walk a few blocks to one's car.

I wonder how the perception that downtown isn't safe (I don't believe that perception by the way) contributes to why people don't want to walk any distance to their cars. If police officers were visible walking the streets, it might reduce that perception. Perhaps some downtown workers (especially women) don't like walking to their cars once it's getting dark, or feeling vulnerable in a large parking lot after dark. They also have to contend with vagrants and homeless approaching them for money, which creates uneasiness under the best of conditions.

I also agree with the assertion made about the unmeasured costs of large surface parking lots in the suburbs. When there is urban sprawl, the City has to put into place the infastructure (water, utilities, streets, sewers, drainage systems, lighting, fire hydrants, snow removal; build fire and police stations, schools, etc.). This doesn't have to be done in established areas of the city. There is also the problem of lack of density and how it affects the potential to collect taxes and revenues from the land. Denser communities produce more income for the City per square foot. Acres of parking lots produce little income for the City to pay for the costs of suburban infastructure.

carfreekc · Post by **carfreekc** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 12:17 am

FangKC wrote:I wonder how the perception that downtown isn't safe (I don't believe that perception by the way) contributes to why people don't want to walk any distance to their cars. If police officers were visible walking the streets, it might reduce that perception. Perhaps some downtown workers (especially women) don't like walking to their cars once it's getting dark, or feeling vulnerable in a large parking lot after dark.

Several years ago I lived in Quality Hill and worked in the Town Pavilion. I walked home from work at night (maybe 9, 10 pm) many times and didn't think anything of it, but coworkers would always comment on me doing that, like I was risking my life in those five blocks. At the time our short-lived neighborhood association was getting the crime stats for the area every month, so I knew what was getting reported at least, and I knew that part was as safe, if not safer, than many suburbs. I never felt uncomfortable walking home or around my apartment at night.

But...as a woman, there are parts of downtown that feel creepy at night to me, whether or not reality backs that up. Blocks of empty parking garages and lots and dark buildings are creepy as hell to walk by when it looks like you're the only damn person around (at least to me). Having those downtown ambassadors (or whatever they're called) around more of downtown more hours of the day would help. But a lot of times by the time I leave work, I don't see a single one of them. They seem to be concentrated more in the center of downtown during business hours. I know from the routes I walk anywhere in the city at night that I feel more secure in the parts where I know there are other people around (walk on the side of the street with the fire station; walk by the building that always has a security guard outside; walk by the always crowded bar instead of on the other side of the street where no one ever is). I don't know how much of that is ingrained by being female and how much of that a guy might feel too. But I still probably walk more going to and from the bus downtown than most drivers do in a day, judging from the reactions I get from them.

Sadly, I don't think the unwillingness to walk to parked cars is limited to downtown. I used to work in south KC in a suburban office, and people would bitch all the time about having to "park in the south 40" and walk in. This was just a regular freaking office parking lot. When we had company meetings at the synagogue next door, people drove to it. These were often the same people who worked out in the company gym over lunch. Uh, hello?

FangKC · Post by **FangKC** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 12:51 am

I agree about the irony of people being unwilling to walk any distance to their cars, yet join a gym. Instead of walking in real life for free, they pay to walk on one of those machines that stand in place.

I'm willing to bet that if huge grocery stores--with aisles as big as streets--provided free electric carts for people to ride on while they shopped, most people would ride through the aisles instead of pushing a cart and walking. And the fat people would be leading the charge. The other thing I think is funny is the phenomenon of suburbanites who drive to a shopping mall to exercise each day.

StL_Dan · Post by **StL_Dan** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 1:26 am

some of these things you are saying are making me chuckle....cuz they're dead ON.

another phenomenon that cracks me up is once a nice parking lot is paved....people drive in circles minute after minute and will even wait for someone with a premo spot to vacate in order to save a few steps.

on any given errand, once i enter a parking lot, i try to id a car that enters the lot with me to see if they are a "searcher". i find the most reasonable spot available, then start walking at my normal pace (assuming i'm running errand solo). usually, i enter the big box store as the searcher is shutting their car door.

i got a nice walk...enjoyed the elements....got some fresh air and am ready to take care of business

i love those small victories

carfreekc · Post by **carfreekc** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 1:29 am

FangKC wrote:I'm willing to bet that if huge grocery stores--with aisles as big as streets--provided free electric carts for people to ride on while they shopped, most people would ride through the aisles instead of pushing a cart and walking.

You know those carts they have at Price Choppers, where the kids can sit in the plastic "cars" at the front of them so they don't bug their parents? The training is starting early. They have those at the Price Chopper in Brookside, and I never really thought anything about them. They actually seemed kind of cute, and the kids seemed to have fun in them.

Then one day I was at the Price Chopper at 103rd + State Line and saw a kid in one of those car carts. The aisles at the one in Brookside are narrow compared to the usual aisles in the monster stores further out. When I saw one of those car carts in the context of one of the usual wide-ass suburban grocery aisles that you're talking about, Fang....well, it's not too hard to draw the comparison between the 6+ lane arterials in suburbs built for cars and the fun little toys we're "driving" our kids around in grocery stores.

Ok, enough car rant for me for the day. I wanna change my screen name to la flaneuse or something else.

macnw · Post by **macnw** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 11:21 am

Don't we model what our parents do? If parents don'e exercise, why will the kids. Habits/behaviors, whatever you want to call it, start very early in life. People change when they have a reason to change. The reality is most people won't change unless strongly motivated to do so for some reason(health/sickness). It all starts at home and at schools, and you might as well forget the schools(cuts in physical educ are the first ones to go).

phxcat · Post by **phxcat** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 6:58 pm

Dan- at MANC, did you walk or drive to chapel? That was something that always puzzled me- especially the people who were planning on going out in the bush to become missionaries, but didn't want to walk to chapel.

TheDude · Post by **TheDude** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 4:08 pm

You may be missing the point--could it be that the AG is getting ready to start a major investigation of the TIF commission/EDC and its handling of PUBLIC TAX $$ that can not be substantially accounted for? read the PITCH article on Barnes & Co and their actions to sweep the issue under the carpet. Councilwoman Nace spoke up, but Barnes put the kabash on her. Something sneaky is going on at City Hall folks.....but what else is new? Only a matter of time before Bookman brings the hammer down on the EDC and pulls 'em into City Hall.

"Well you know what happens after dark
When rattlesnakes lose their skins and their hearts
And all the missionaries lose their bark
Oh, all the trees are calling after you
And all the venom snipers after you
Are all the mountains bolder after you?"

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