I've never understood incentives for greenfield retail. It's the dumbest use of incentives possible. There is either a market or there isn't , using incentives is not going to change that, it doesn't make the market larger and we end up collectively robbing Peter to pay Paul which is exactly what is happening. The only place incentives make any sense for retail is in an urban setting where the expense of parking makes it unlikely that developers are willing to pull the trigger and urban dwellers end up having to drive to the burbs for shopping.GRID wrote:Nah, metro KC is no less dense than most other metros.shinatoo wrote:I saw a map the other day of retail mortgage delinquency by metro area for the US. Kansas City was the only major metro with over 25% of its retail mortgages in default or delinquent. Has to be because we overbuilt. We overbuilt because there is no density.
KC's retail is extremely overbuilt for one reason. Excessive incentives. Almost all of KC's retail is subsidized. Even retail in affluent southernn and western JoCo is subsidized. All the new stuff in Blue Springs and Lee's Summit. Village West. Olathe. The Northland is probably subsidized the least, but it still is and it's still overbuilt. By least I mean there are some Tifs, but the Northland doesn't have the super incentives like supertiff/star bond stuff which is basically building retail with tax money.
Funny thing is. People are still completely clueless. Projects like Bluehawk in Overland Park are still getting massive subsidies today to build brand new retail that is totally not needed.
I have never seen a metro area subsidize retail at the rate that KC does, especially for brand new development in already overbuilt affluent suburbs. It's absolutly nuts.
Combine eCommerce with the fact that metro KC is way overbuilt and everything is subsidized and Metro KC is on the verge of mass suburban retail blight.
The other problems with using incentives in greenfield is that it's really poor use of a limited resource (incentives are a limited resource - or at least should be). The jobs created are generally poor paying, and for most KC burbs and don't really enhance the community, and the money used to create the incentives are no longer available for more pressing matter or even incentives that are more pressing (like creating better paying jobs outside of the local service industry).
Still, I am very surprised Zona Rosa is having financial issues. After the demise of Metro North, what else is there in the Northland? What's creating the competition that's impacting Zona Rosa? I was up there a few months ago, not much else in the Northland other than a few big box stores.