ArvadaforAllthePeople

Urban Renewal Reform Efforts are Spreading!

Now Wheat Ridge!

Here in Arvada, the current council political machine have made the citizen Initiative and Referendum process practically impossible.

So, the only way to protect the Arvada taxpayer, to stop the shift of tax revenues from schools and city services to special deals for favored developers, is to elect a new city council this November.

Wheat Ridge voters will see tax-increment finance measure on ballot | Denver Post - July 16, 2015

Wheat Ridge voters will consider a measure on tax-increment financing in November.

Last week, the city clerk's office certified that enough signatures were valid on a petition turned in by citizen's group Keep Wheat Ridge Local. Monday night, City Council approved the official ballot title for the initiative.

If passed in November, the measure would require any tax-increment financing package over $2.5 million to be voted on by Wheat Ridge residents.

The measure would also take final approval for any TIF package under $2.5 million away from the city's Urban Renewal Authority and place it in the hands of a City Council vote. ...

The effort came in response to last month's  City Council approval of $6.2 million in tax incentivesto the developer of a Walmart-anchored project at the southwest corner of 38th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard, said Keep Wheat Ridge Local organizer Monica Duran.

"This is important because the citizens out there want to have a voice and have a say in the development that comes into our community," Duran said. "The main thing we heard from folks is 'they're not listening to us. They hear us but aren't listening to us.' It's a great corner, an important corner, why can't we do better?" ...

The Quality Deception of the 'Arvada Hilton'

Quality is in doubt.

The developer of the proposed Hilton Garden Inn on the site of the failed Arvada Urban Renewal Brooklyn's restaurant site has released new drawings of what the hotel might look like.

These kinds of architectural renderings always look great ... the colors are uniform and vivid; the lines are clean against a perfectly white background; dumpsters, parked vendor vehicles, cinder block barriers, etc. are not penciled-in; this is the dream-world drawing. (By the way, the last we heard, the exterior is merely colored panels -- not brick or stonework.)

But make no mistake, on this particular Arvada Urban Renewal (AURA) project, the drawing highlights the reasonable and credible reasons for concern over the quality of construction.

Like the Brooklyn's failure, this private-government partnership project could be doomed as well because of distortions and manipulations of the real estate market by Arvada Urban Renewal.

Because according to AURA's own words, this Hilton could not be built without massive subsidies to the private developer from the government. That means 'Arvada Hilton Investors, LLC' (AHI - the developer partnership of builder Brinkmann and the hotel franchisee, Renascent Hospitality of Ohio) is going to be hard pressed to keep construction costs extra low wherever possible. The government and the developer will, of course, deny that subsidies mean poorer quality building fabrication ... but common sense tells you otherwise, there are only so many places to cut costs. It is basic capitalism: cut costs to increase profit, especially when you are starting in a fiscal hole. 

Here it is:

"AURA staff analyzed the development proforma, including TIF projections and construction estimates and verified that there is a financial shortfall of approximately $5,562,000 in AHI’s development pro forma. To address the gap, AURA will 1.) discount the cost of the property to AHI from the price paid by AURA of $3,287,000 to $500,000 and 2.) rebate to the developer the 2% lodging tax for a period of ten years up to $800,000. The total value of the land discount and tax rebate is $3,587,000. The remaining financial shortfall in the development proforma of $1,975,000 will be AHI’s responsibility and serviced by the planned 6% PIF." ... “effectively bringing the lodging tax to 8%.” (AURA packet; January 7, 2015) 

Got that? The developer is over five and a half million dollars short of what it needs to build this hotel across from the beige concrete west wall of Lowe's Home Improvement Center. So, just to get started the city government through the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority is contriving ways to make up the difference.

One doesn't need to read the whole of Adam Smith's primer on capitalism, The Wealth of Nations, to understand that what Arvada government is trying to do is not free enterprise; is not the functioning of a free market; is not encouraging of competition and entrepreneurialism; and is not in-line with the basic values of regular Arvada citizens.

If Hilton, Brinkmann and Renascent Hospitality want to build a hotel in Arvada, let them do it with their own money -- not with a handout from the taxpayer through the conniving of Arvada Urban Renewal.

Change in policy is clearly needed in Arvada government: the disdain towards free enterprise and the belittling of the concerns of citizens and of our own Arvada history and demands change.