With its five mighty phalli thrusting into the sky, the Seaholm Power Plant cuts an imposing figure. So, alas, will its price.
The city considered the future of the abandoned Metropolis back lot on Thursday but not before it was unveiled to an anticipatory public earlier that day via a tongue bath from that most lascivious of development-coquettes – a shimmering Statesman real estate profile, ridden as hard and wet as the rag’s Wal-Mart reveal last year. (Followed this week by those post-office condos Downtown – the little minx sure gets around!)
Breathless, Fabio-quality coverage aside, the plans for Seaholm are indeed ambitious. The centerpiece – preserving the hulking art deco turbine hall and converting it into retail space – seems truly inspired. The trouble only begins when we look beyond the Fritz Lang fever-dream. A 22-story tower will hold – what else? – luxury condos starting just shy of $500,000, atop a hotel managed by Downtown power player Jeff Trigger. Rounding out the plans are a two-story office and large swath of parkland for the riffraff. That price-point for entry seems to ensure a waterfront seniors’ home for retired Dell first-wavers and transplanted Cali Valley porn-producers longing to live in the set from Tim Burton’s Batman. If the promise of a vibrant, bustling Downtown neighborhood instead is destined to become a sticky Architectural Digest centerfold and another half-assed Triangle-ulation of “mixed-use,” couldn’t the funds the city’s investing be better used elsewhere?
The city will invest upward of $18 million in infrastructure: streets, rights-of-way, utility costs, a parking garage. Mayor Pro Tem Betty Dunkerley noted that most of that cost will be paid by taxes and fees from the development itself; once the city’s bonds are paid off, 40% of the development’s taxes are channeled into an affordable-housing fund. “Currently, both of the CSC [Computer Sciences Corporation] buildings on either side [of City Hall] are putting 40% of their taxes into that fund,” she said. Citizens, take comfort; when the next gleaming engine of outsourcing and federal databasing replaces a beloved nightclub, soothes Dunkerley, “Any time we do these kinds of developments, whether it’s Seaholm or on Block 21, or potentially on Green [Water Treatment Plant], we really are creating an ongoing fund for affordable housing.”
In the new boom, we must destroy the city to save it.
To their credit, Jennifer Kim and Mike Martinez strove to promote affordability in a less laissez-faire fashion. “We are using public land, and the way it’s being presented … [it] doesn’t have an affordability component,” said Martinez. “I realize that we have to make a strong investment. If we are looking at 100 percent TIF [tax increment financing, dedicating a portion of the taxes increased by development to pay for it], can we get creative and potentially look at something like an 80 percent TIF over 30 years, which gives you a 20 percent net gain at the end of those 20 years?” For Martinez, the idea was to use the 20 percent to begin buying affordability at Seaholm today, instead of waiting 20 years for the whole 40 percent to kick in. “I just think we need to get as creative as possible when we are taking something like public land, turning it into a project that is only for high-end development,” he concluded. Noting that investment dollars will stretch further now rather than later, Kim argued that while affordability requirements of 80 percent of annual median family income ($39,850 for one, $45,500 for a family of two, $51,200 for three) may not mean much in the ‘burbs, “80 percent MFI is a huge buy-down in cost in Downtown.” Here’s hoping it’s successful. As the mayor earnestly closed, “Patience is a virtue, but we also need to make hay while the sun shines.”
Whatever that means, yes.
Hey, Big Spender!: Council also temporarily cinched the city manager’s purse strings, delaying the spending of some $85 million in bonds burning a hole in Toby Futrell’s pantsuit – until the bond oversight committee can review the recommendations. Making the motion, Martinez said he “really would like to have a bit more public input … especially from the oversight committee that we’re putting in place, just so that we can get some feedback.” Also delayed, until council’s Feb. 15 meeting is, as the late Peggy Lee might have put it, the “good looking, so refined” Big Box Ordinance. No doubt the council will show it a good time. 
This article appears in February 9 • 2007.