FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION
NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION
Contents
Introduction
Case Examples
Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
Denver, Colorado
San Diego, California
San Francisco Bay Area
Smaller Studies
Arlington County, Virginia
Chicago, Illinois
Cleveland, Ohio
Evanston, Illinois
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Memphis, Tennessee
Saint Louis, Missouri
South Orange, New Jersey
Washington, D.C.
Resources
-- Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation
Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl (Henry Holt, 1997)
Go to the heart of any thriving community and you will discover the special place reserved there for historic resources and for the public transportation that enhances access to them. During the past two decades, Americans have rediscovered and embraced the historic elements of their cities and neighborhoods, and in recent years have shifted the focus of conservation efforts from individually important buildings and districts to the traditional forms, transportation choices, and street designs that make city centers and residential areas walkable and workable for businesses and residents. Cities and towns that have replenished and revitalized critical public transportation links in their downtowns and nearby neighborhoods are also extending their efforts to work with regional agencies and adjacent communities to capture the benefits of public transportation and preserve historic urban designs throughout metropolitan areas.
What factors have contributed to this urban revolution -- a revolution in the less-frequently used sense of the word, a "return to center"? And how can we -- preservationists, local elected and appointed officials, transportation professionals, planners, and others interested in the health and well being of communities -- make the most of our existing historic resources to improve transportation options and livability in the widest possible range of places, from small towns to suburban centers to major cities?
The study that resulted in this book was initiated in September 2001 to examine how decisions about public transportation, land development and redevelopment, and historic preservation have complemented one another in dozens of communities nationwide. The goal of the study was to demonstrate how transit and historic preservation act as compatible forces to revitalize communities. We set out to illuminate the many ways in which communities of all sizes have restored their urban or suburban cores and made full use of those centers' capacities to help metropolitan areas grow sustainably. We wanted to find out how historic preservation values are informing community planning for public transit, and how these values are being used in development decisions intended to promote transit use.
In the early stages of our study, we focused on classic rail terminal facilities that had been transformed into intermodal centers to facilitate movement in and among modes of transportation. An important initial question was whether these splendidly restored monuments to the golden age of rail passenger service were serving again as vital hubs in multimodal transportation systems, and whether their revitalization was contributing to economic development activities nearby. We drew on the work of the Great American Station Foundation (GASF), which has documented economic revitalization near historic train stations. In collaboration with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the GASF reported on its work in Rail Stations: At the Heart of America's Communities, showcasing numerous examples of station restorations that benefited from strong local leadership in the service of reviving passenger rail and revitalizing communities through historic preservation.
We found abundant evidence that historic rail stations have an important role in community planning for public transit. Reuse of these stations can greatly boost the economic development needed to sustain transit and attract new riders. Our findings led us to extend the scope of our inquiry into other important aspects of the relationships among transit, historic preservation, and economic development. Much could be learned, for example, from exploring the influence of public transportation on historic growth and development patterns. We were curious about the large stock of historic commercial buildings that typically exist in downtowns, particularly those once served by rail: the factories, warehouses, and large-scale retail stores of previous centuries. We wanted to understand how these buildings served and were served by the local transit systems, and the impact of these historic resources on the character of contemporary central business districts.
We also took a cue from several major cities, including Denver, San Diego, and St. Louis, and examined the historic neighborhoods immediately adjacent to downtowns. In the vicinity of San Francisco, Cleveland, and Chicago, among many other major cities, are suburban villages that flourished historically because of access to the urban core provided by public transit in its golden age. We found that we needed to examine how downtowns and these nearby communities integrated contemporary transportation developments that accommodate automobiles, especially parking facilities, in ways that would support rather than undermine community preservation and transit-oriented development. We also needed to examine the ways in which downtown revitalization and historic preservation are and should be integrated into regional approaches to improving transit and local economic development.
Federal leadership in the past two decades has stimulated the kind of transit-oriented revitalization this report showcases. In particular, two Federal programs -- the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project and the Transportation Enhancements provision contained in Federal surface transportation law -- have provided communities with funding and other support to restore their historic rail stations and renew their downtowns.
Substantially completed by the mid-1980s, the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project was authorized in the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976. The project endowed Amtrak with the capability to operate fast, reliable, comfortable, and economically sound rail passenger service in the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston, while restoring landmark passenger stations in this corridor to their former glory.
Many of these architectural masterpieces, including Daniel Burnham's Washington Union Station and H.H. Richardson's New London Union Station, are on the National Register of Historic Places. These and other stations, including Boston South Station and Newark Pennsylvania Station, have since become important hubs in regional and metropolitan public transportation systems and are contributing to nearby economic development.
Much of Boston South Station's magnificent curving facade and a portion of the original main waiting room were saved from the wrecking ball after being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The station is now the indispensable core of a multimodal transportation network that includes commuter rail, Amtrak, the Boston subway system, intercity bus service, and an underground bus rapid transit system -- the Transitway -- that provides public transit for the major redevelopment effort underway on the South Boston waterfront.
The Federal Transit Administration contributed $450 million to the cost of the two underground bus rapid transit stations adjacent to three key South Boston waterfront destinations: the World Trade Center, the new convention center, and the federal courthouse. The Transitway brings most of this 300-acre development within a quarter mile walk of modern, amenity-rich transit for workers, visitors, and residents.
This extension of center city Boston is among the most ambitious transit-oriented developments in the United States, thanks to dramatic limits on parking, a modernized legal framework for shoreline development, water transit facilities, pedestrian-friendly urban streets lined with retail and other active uses, and large, mixed-use developments balancing housing and office space.
The Northeast Corridor project's historic station restorations included elements that today are considered essential to good transit-oriented development. In addition to refurbishing the significant historic and architectural features of Baltimore Union Station, for example, the corridor project helped finance multimodal access to the station and developed a partnership with the city of Baltimore that produced additional site improvements, including new street lights, sidewalk repairs and reglazing of the station canopy. Commercial and retail space has been added or improved. Partnerships among units of government, transit agencies, and the private sector have enhanced the utility, community attachment, and multimodal dimension of these stations.
Image: Boston South Station's facade during renovation.
Congress made the rehabilitation of historic transportation facilities eligible for transportation enhancements funding in 1991 when the program was first created, thus recognizing the value of rail stations and depots to "enhance the community benefits of transportation investments."
Transportation enhancements have contributed many millions of federal dollars and stimulated an additional 34 percent from state, local, and private sources for restoration of hundreds of historic rail passenger stations. The federal transportation enhancements provision has also provided funds for improved pedestrian access, landscaping, public art, and nearby streetscape improvements.
Many rail passenger stations whose restoration was supported with enhancement funds are presently functioning as important community and regional intermodal transportation centers. Few are grander or more ambitious, or more focused on the transportation mission than the Los Angeles Union Station Gateway Transit Center. Enhancements funding accounted for $19.6 million of the project's $125 million price tag. Art, architecture, and landscaping help create a comfortable walking environment within this giant multimodal transportation facility that serves regional commuter rail, Amtrak, subway, buses, cars, vanpools, taxis, and pedestrians. The individual's perception of the time and effort spent in walking to and waiting for transit is modified at the transit gateway in ways that are reminiscent of the impact of the historic station's grandeur on rail travelers. Transportation planners see the gateway experience as a means of restoring the notion that downtown Los Angeles is a place for walking.
The expansion of multimodal travel concentrated at the Gateway Transit Center is contributing to economic development in the downtown's north end, where Union Station's 51 acres are being gradually developed by the Catellus Development Corporation, the real estate arm of the Santa Fe Railroad. Both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Metropolitan Water District purchased sections of the property for their headquarters. Parts of the old Union Station remain undeveloped, and Catellus continues to weigh development opportunities for its station area land. Another developer of office space about a block from the gateway cited proximity to great transit and a great building as one of the drivers for his project.
Historic rail stations in American communities are once again becoming dynamic gathering places for city transportation services and engines for economic growth. The rebirth of these historic stations is only part of the much larger story of how transit, urban revitalization, and historic preservation are working in concert to bring back our city and town centers. To tell that larger story, we decided to look beyond station redevelopments to the surrounding downtowns, nearby neighborhoods, and transit-oriented suburbs that are served by rail systems and that, in turn, contribute to the economic vibrancy of successful cities.
Much is being written about economic development and community revitalization. Information abounds on efforts to bring back cities, improve transit, and craft new development to encourage transit use. Recognition is growing that historic preservation is a key contributor to community revitalization. Little has been written, however, about how transit, development to support it, community revitalization, and historic preservation inseparably serve common goals and reinforce one another's successes. Our case examples weave these themes together and also address them individually. We have relied on the published work of transit and development professionals, community revitalization advocates, and the principal proponents of the historic preservation-community revitalization nexus, as well as the observations of practitioners in the field.
Working from these sources, we can demonstrate that public transit strengthens community revitalization, especially in urban cores; and that an economically and socially resurgent urban core is key to successful public transit. Historic preservation contributes directly to transit success by contributing directly to urban development. A closely related thesis suggests that restoring the centripetal power of a city's downtown is a sustainable way for a metropolitan area to grow more wisely. Historic structures and historic development patterns contribute to the success of public transit and, along with transit, contribute to the urban renaissance.
In addition to recycling old and historic buildings and returning them to productive economic use, cities are reclaiming environmentally degraded industrial sites for reuse as agents of urban revitalization and contributors to redevelopment. The physical relationship of these reclaimed brownfields to public transit adds to their value. The Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, in a collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency, produced an informative and useful study of urban land reclamation in 2001 entitled Redeveloping Brownfields with Federal Transportation Funds.
The more transit and adjacent development contribute to community revitalization, the greater the chance of success in achieving other goals, such as providing more travel choices, easing traffic congestion, lessening dependence on autos for virtually every trip, contributing to healthy air, providing affordable housing and the opportunity for wealth accumulation for working families, preserving open space and farm land, and improving the quality of life for Americans.
At the outset of the study, we organized a day-long symposium, attended by professionals in preservation, transportation, and development from both the public and private sectors. The group examined the characteristics of successful development adjacent to or in relation to public transit stations. Participants suggested places where historic resources were contributing to making the phenomenon work. A literature review was conducted after the symposium to discover written resources on the topic of historic preservation's role in transit-oriented revitalization.
Discussion at the symposium and subsequent readings suggested that successful redevelopment around transit stations could be measured by simultaneous contributions to many goals, including improved access and multiple travel choices for a mix of activities near transit, where the station and its surroundings make for a lively, attractive place where people can do much more than ride public transit. The fundamental measure of success remains an economic one: housing units are occupied, businesses are prospering, and more people are riding transit.
Early in the study the project team agreed that there were characteristics and vital signs of transit and transit-related development policies that set communities apart from one another and seem to be abundantly present in successful transit-oriented development. Separating these vital signs out for examination and comment does not suggest that these indicators exist in isolation of one another. To the contrary: The essential correlation among these elements in the real world of transit and transit-related development is our critical finding. Professionals and advocates working in transit, development, urban revitalization, and historic preservation have told us that to be successful they felt they "had to do everything" and "it all depended on everything working," affirming the paramount importance of incorporating all of these characteristics into planning, design, and construction.
ABOUT WALKING
Walking is successful public transit's significant other, just as it was at the turn of the last century when railroad interurbans and streetcars were the mobility choices of busy and expanding communities . Vincent Scully once noted that the reintroduction of trolleys into the urban fabric would have to be built on a pedestrian base," ... on the willingness of people to walk a little bit -- and to live a good deal longer."
The successful importation of the good walking streets of bygone downtowns and old neighborhoods into the transit villages of the 21st century reminds us that walking infrastructure still exists in the transit villages of the previous century. These were places with wide sidewalks and narrow streets lined with shops open to the sidewalk and displaying wares, where human contact was encouraged and welcomed. Merchants along these thoroughfares prospered because of foot traffic. Blocks were not long. The grid was complete and functioned as a travel connector.
The idea that people can be encouraged to walk much more than they do just by changing the look and feel of places is at the heart of the transit village concept . Transit-oriented development that does not facilitate and encourage walking is missing the opportunity to offer travel alternatives that people are going to embrace. Reviving the pedestrian experience in the vicinity of transit stops can strengthen transit's capacity to meet its goal of slowing the growth of vehicle miles traveled.
A study in 2000 by S.B. Friedman & Company of Chicago polled commuter rail passengers about their trips to and from stations. The study found that a rider's decision to walk is affected by a "pleasant walking atmosphere," defined as an interconnected network of streets with sidewalks and a continuous architectural fabric, with stores next to the station. Large parking lots and even parks can act as barriers between stations and surrounding neighborhoods.
HARMONY BETWEEN LAND USE AND TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
If the objectives of a transit system are to ease congestion, reduce auto-dependence, and improve air quality, then it stands to reason that development near transit should be as densely populated as the character of the place will permit, have mixed uses to encourage fewer automobile trips, and be as attractive as possible to potential patrons. Linked land use and transportation planning should also discourage exclusively auto-dependent land uses and excessive dispersal of commuter destinations that would work at cross purposes with transit investments.
Metropolitan planning organizations and regional councils of government are contributing to regionwide solutions. With their capacity to develop consensus and cooperation among local governments, regional agencies are uniquely equipped to promote supportive land use and zoning decisions on the part of local governments and to encourage better understanding of historic preservation values. For example, SANDAG, San Diego's regional planning agency, has unanimously adopted a regional transportation plan for 2030 that offers a blueprint for spending $42 billion on transit expansion, travel demand management measures, modest investments in freeway connections, and funding for small projects to strengthen links between transportation and land use.
Cities are also doing their part, implementing zoning and regulatory changes to encourage transit-supportive land use planning, promoting efforts to increase transit ridership, and supporting a regional commitment to public transit that supports continued economic growth.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Citizens and stakeholders must be a part of the many layers of public decisions that bolster community revitalization, transit, and transit-oriented development. Public support is necessary for success, and the public's sense of ownership will advance transit goals, facilitate agreement with difficult decisions such as zoning changes, and secure votes on critical public revenue decisions. Planning for redevelopment should elicit the participation of individual citizens as transit patrons and residents in compact, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods; as well as citizens serving in community-based organizations who can provide solutions, help disseminate information, work to build consensus, and break down skepticism. To be successful, public involvement ought to be open, honest, early, and continuous, and its capacity to produce good transit and development solutions should be sought after.
Smart Communities: Curbing Sprawl at Its Core, published by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, describes how Bethel New Life, Inc. a church-affiliated community development corporation (CDC), helped organize opposition to the Chicago Transit Authority's planned closing of the Lake/Pulaski station and the rest of the Green Line in the early 1990s. The neighborhood of West Garfield Park had lost 60 percent of its population since the 1960s and saw the threatened loss of the station and Green Line service as an opportunity to reverse its fortunes.
Bethel New Life provided Chicago with an alternative to what the city considered the surrender of yet another city neighborhood to outward migration. As a result of citizen and CDC effort, and the foresight to organize support from other communities along the Green Line, West Garfield Park has a newly renovated transit station, the Green Line has been modernized, and plans are underway for a massive mobilization of private and public resources around a community revitalization vision that is at once intensely local and broadly regional.
GOVERNANCE THAT SUPPORTS TRANSIT INVESTMENT AND TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT
Federal, state, regional, and local political jurisdictions have become major players in the successful development of public transit systems whose increasing use is fostered by good transit-oriented design. This book contains a variety of examples of decisions by government agencies that contribute to transit success, including the judicious investment of public funds to promote transit use.
Governments make many decisions that affect transit's capacity to achieve its broad policy goals. The fundamental lesson is that transit agencies must continually identify government incentives and barriers wherever they exist. What units of government do and do not do are very often critical to transit success, most importantly as they influence a community's ability to foster transit-oriented development.
For example, New Jersey adjusted its building codes in 1998 for the rehabilitation of older buildings by eliminating certain high-cost requirements that were designed for new construction but discouraged restoration. In addition to removing much of the guesswork and need for variances from rehabilitation approvals, the new code made possible an incredible 40.6 percent increase in rehabilitation work in the state's sixteen largest cities during the first year of enactment. Applications for the federal historic preservation tax credit increased five-fold following the code's adoption.
In California, level-of-service standards in the vicinity of transit stations were adjusted to ease requirements for additional road capacity to accommodate anticipated increases in auto traffic near transit stations. Cities and counties can now exempt themselves from state-mandated levels-of-service requirements by promoting transit ridership with mixed-use developments.
Chicago is in the midst of a major revision of its zoning law, the largest overhaul of its kind in any U.S. city in 40 years, according to Governing magazine. A code that was hailed as a national model 50 years ago is no longer capable of guiding the growth and urban revitalization Chicago is experiencing. Across the country, codes have become an obstacle to reviving pedestrian life in downtowns and neighborhood shopping districts. Neighborhoods, including historic residential districts, want rules that require infill housing to respect the architecture and character of the neighborhood.
The list of government actions that can determine success or failure for transit-supportive development is virtually endless. It includes items that influence how downtowns and neighborhood commercial centers will be revitalized. Public policies that set rules for planning, transportation, zoning, the quality and location of public services and facilities, parking, the preservation of historic structures and neighborhoods, community funding priorities, and more can make or break a place's plans for alternate transportation modes and supportive development.
PUBLIC-PRIVATE COLLABORATION
Partnerships between governments and the private sector are evident in every case of successful community revitalization involving public transit. This collaboration is characterized variously by specific development projects, a local government or community revitalization strategy that promotes partnerships, and a myriad of practical arrangements that arise from unique community situations and opportunities, such as shared parking agreements. The older relationships between government and business, based on mistrust and an enforcement mentality that encouraged governments to micromanage private enterprise's involvement in communities, is giving way to mutually beneficial working relationships that create products neither government nor the private developer could produce alone. There are still rules, of course, and when they are applied consistently and fairly, developers can see active adherence to such rules as good business. The melding of public and private goods is seen as a progressive, pragmatic solution to the practical difficulty of getting things done.
ABOUT AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Transit shaped the development of older and historic urban neighborhoods and first-ring suburbs, and then disappeared. Metropolitan areas promoting returning transit systems can ill afford to ignore the potential for patrons living in these neighborhoods of character and quality.
Much of America's existing supply of affordable housing is found in older and historic neighborhoods, according to an analysis by noted land use and real estate expert Donovan Rypkema that appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of the National Trust's Forum Journal. These neighborhoods are home to 31 percent of homeowners with household income below $20,000, and to 31 percent of African American, 24 percent of Hispanic, and 29 percent of elderly homeowners. Over half of all owner-occupied housing units in older and historic neighborhoods have monthly housing costs of less than $500.
Much of the existing housing stock in older and historic neighborhoods is being destroyed. This is a national tragedy, especially when public resources are being pumped into building replicas in new communities of what is being torn down in the older and historic neighborhoods. In the closing three decades of the 20th century, 6.3 million units of year-round housing in older and historic neighborhoods were destroyed.
Housing experts estimate a need for 18 million additional housing units in the first decade of the 21st century .Three million of them can be found today -- vacant and decaying -- in the country's older and historic neighborhoods .Their restoration and reuse, as part of a community's comprehensive reestablishment of transit-oriented development, should be a top priority. Affordable housing and home ownership opportunities near public transit for moderate-income working families in mixed-use, mixed-income settings may well be the easiest of all the Smart Growth goals to achieve, and the one with the most benefits, especially for the wealth-building aspirations of working families overwhelmed today by both housing costs and transportation costs occasioned by auto dependence.
Donovan Rypkema has observed that the first step policy makers can take is to ban the prevailing attitude that "We have to destroy this neighborhood in order to save it," and the second is to accept the validity of the notion that it is very hard to build new and rent or sell inexpensively.
The success stories in downtown revitalization are in the cities and towns that maintained and reinvested in their historic buildings and recognized their character, quality, and ultimate desirability. In these places, historic preservation and restoration of public transit worked hand in hand to generate urban revitalization .The next logical step is to transfer the lessons and successes to the older and historic adjacent neighborhoods and the first-ring suburbs, where transit-oriented development first demonstrated its many benefits during the 20th century.
The partnership approach extends well beyond the critical pooling of resources by private developers and the public sector -- transit agencies and local government. Early involvement of citizens who know their neighborhoods and have earned the right to represent their views and interests -- such as Main Street groups, citizens associations, and community development corporations -- are helpful additions to the leadership of locally elected officials.
FLEXIBLE FINANCING
Like public-private collaboration, financing arrangement issues for transit-oriented developments often involve multiple sources of funds both public and private. Creative financing is a function of the strength of the public-private partnership and is frequently dependent upon the active participation of units of government.
Particularly where the revitalization of existing neighborhoods has residential, commercial, and public improvement components, as most do, and where revitalization is transit-oriented development on a neighborhood scale, the challenges to needed financing can be large and complex. The interdependence of vital signs involving the assembly of financing sources, community involvement, governmental commitments, planning, and public-private partnerships is especially evident, as is the potential for great gains for the many goals of public transit.
The mix of financing instruments -- mortgages, subordinated debt, grants, tax abatements and credits, and patient equity investments -- can be unique and rely on more partners bringing more financing sources than in the usual development project. More partners with more resources and more insights complicate and strengthen the financing of transit-oriented development, as does the involvement of a large number of rehabilitations of existing, privately owned buildings.
The potential of the federal New Markets Tax Credits, designed to stimulate business development in low and moderate income communities, is worth exploring. The 37 percent tax credit, offered over seven years for individuals and companies who invest in commercial projects, is expected to generate $15 billion in new capital by 2012.
Although New Markets gives no special preference to small and neighborhood businesses in commercial districts of older and historic areas, the program's emphasis on low- and moderate-income communities appears tailor-made for the commercial blocks of older, urban, and first-ring neighborhoods. Housing rental units would be eligible for New Markets as long as they are part of a mixed-use development and generate less than 80 percent of the building's overall revenue.
Kennedy Smith, director of the National Main Street Center, itself heavily involved in promoting the potential of New Markets to generate capital for neighborhood-serving business districts, says: "Every dollar of New Markets Tax Credits awarded to investors supporting main street business development not only strengthens our historic commercial districts; it also prevents a dollar of the tax credits from being used to support suburban-style business development or to demolish historic main street buildings."
PRAGMATIC, FORWARD-LOOKING APPROACHES TO PARKING
Parking needs can quickly become the tail wagging the dog when community revitalization strategies are on the table. Meeting a community's immediate parking needs while working to curb and even reduce those needs over time calls for sensitivity to other vital signs such as community awareness and involvement, governance, and economic factors. Transit systems have stages of development and maturity and are at specific stages of maturity in different parts of their own systems. Park-and-ride operations have a role to play in newer transit systems or at outlying stations, as do parking concessions for residents and commercial operations that address both transit use and residual auto dependence. Bolder parking policies are called for in places where the transit system is fully developed and quite capable of succeeding while discouraging driving.
Parking issues must be addressed pragmatically. Citizen reaction to density produced by commercial and residential developments is almost always about auto congestion and parking availability. Policy makers need to be sympathetic and skilled in navigating citizen concerns, and at the same time should advocate for parking schemes that rely on -- rather than conflict with -- the availability of transit and other services within a pleasant walking environment.
No aspect of transit-supportive development is more parochial than parking and less susceptible to generalized solutions, but it is important to understand that communities such as Gaithersburg, Maryland; Denver, Colorado; and South Orange, New Jersey are moving ahead to devise parking strategies based on the availability of transit within a good walking environment for many daily needs that reduces auto dependence and therefore demand for suburban-style parking arrangements.
Communities are focusing on the true costs of parking and how it adversely affects the costs of affordable housing. Excessive parking reduces the opportunity for transit and transit-oriented development to meet goals for reducing auto dependence. Transportation demand management; incentives for transit use, including employer-provided transit passes; an equalization of federal tax benefits provided for parking and transit; and the full range of trip-reduction capacities inherent in transit access and transit supportive development all can help communities committed to travel choices to break away from suburban-style parking approaches, when conditions warrant.
Measures of Success
The many partners in a successful transit-oriented revitalization need to measure their success separately as they remain mindful of the mutual benefits of their joint efforts. Transit agencies must demonstrate increased ridership. Metropolitan and air quality officials need to show a decline in the growth of vehicle miles traveled. Local governments and citizen groups often want clear signs that affordable housing has been preserved and real estate values maintained or increased. Mayors want to see rising sales tax revenue. Downtown civic groups and cities want to see the growth of jobs and activities downtown. Residents of older neighborhoods want to maintain or enhance home ownership and the quality of life they have come to expect where they live.
Less obvious but no less important are the qualitative measures of a successful revitalization involving historic preservation and transit. Among the many possibilities, we noted the following:
• Avid and continued interest among a variety of private and public entities in development opportunities for parcels large and small within the revitalization area; especially during an economic downturn;
• Sufficient maturity of a redevelopment area or a history of development cycles in an area that indicates long-term success;
• Presence of transportation choices that work together to increase transit use and promote community reinvestment;
• Intact historic resources with promising redevelopment and adaptive reuse opportunities, as well as patterns of settlement and travel that support and increase transit use and attract historic preservation;
• Financial success on the part of both the transit systems and the developers of property served by those systems; and
• Enthusiastic community acceptance of the blending of transit and redevelopment of historic places.
The study team understood that our use of the term transit-oriented development (TOD) would raise certain expectations and perhaps impose limitations on the study. TOD is a much-hyped concept, and with the hype has come a predictable amount of misinformation and misrepresentation within the policy and development worlds. Even the most knowledgeable proponents of TOD also tend to emphasize the development aspect of the concept. With some notable exceptions, including Michael Bernick's and Robert Cervero's Transit Villages in the 21st Century, much of the existing literature on TOD is about new places created along transit corridors, with infrequent mention of the fact that many of the core concepts of TOD are derived from practices that were commonplace in years gone by.
The highly visible "neo-traditional" success stories have led to a notion of TOD as a new idea. In fact, new TOD developments promote transit use through time-honored strategies to create density and mixed uses, income diversity, and pedestrian-supportive design. Such characteristics are already present -- though often in need of rehabilitation and support -- in the older communities that thrived before the full flowering of our present highway-intensive way of life. Yet the resurgence of the many intact older communities that inspired the New Urbanism is less well known. We set out to shed light on this glaring gap in the story of America's great places.
Development that is merely adjacent to transit and lacks the characteristics necessary to support transit is unlikely to function very effectively as a generator of transit use. The transit villages that came of age in the late 19th century exhibited all the characteristics modern TOD proponents describe as ideal for today, including a coherent transportation pattern that worked within each transit village at the pedestrian scale and multiplied efficiently throughout corridors and regions, connecting neighborhoods and suburban towns to the urban core via public transportation. Transit shaped the development of many of these places and then disappeared. Some are being revitalized, with or without a strong transit component. Others are ripe to be recycled and reintegrated into the larger, once-vibrant, transit-connected metropolis of old. And still others just wait -- great wastes of urban resources whose return could contribute again to planned and well-managed metropolitan growth.
Today's transit-oriented development must take its cue from these historically efficient places, using them as backbones for redevelopment and compatible infill development. Our planning for transit-oriented developments must extend beyond station area development and into the metropolitan arena. The most successful TOD projects acknowledge and enhance a downtown's or neighborhood's contribution to public transit service regionwide. Just as a transit system that provides travel options is absolutely essential to metropolitan revitalization, a dynamic historic preservation component that offers many development opportunities is a most deliberate element in revitalization of the core, nearby neighborhoods, and outlying town centers still connected to the core.
Most cities have an active historic preservation component to their revitalization activities, of which public transit is also an integral part. As Donovan Rypkema has said, "I have a hard time separating downtown revitalization and historic preservation, for one simple reason: I cannot identify a single sustained success story in downtown revitalization in a city of any size anywhere in the country where historic preservation was not a key element in the process."
In selecting our case examples, we sought a cross-section of approaches to the challenge of inviting growth and preserving historic resources in and near downtowns, with a strong transit component. We focused slightly more attention on four cities and regions (coincidentally, all of them in Western states): Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Denver, Colorado; San Diego, California; and the San Francisco Bay Area. These regions each embody different aspects of the challenges and opportunities facing all thirteen of our study areas. In Denver, and San Diego, for example, adaptive reuse of individual buildings or clusters of buildings in the central business district is a practice of long standing that has led to more ambitious regional approaches to revitalization. Yet the connections among historic preservation, land use planning, and transit are more explicit in Denver than in San Diego, even though the opportunities are similar. In Dallas and Fort Worth, the private sector is discovering the benefits of anchoring residential and commercial development in historic areas that are newly served by state-of-the-art transit systems. In the Bay Area, the regional transit authority is working with several communities to correct flaws in the original siting of facilities and to recreate public space and Main Street-style thoroughfares in suburban centers.
Our smaller case studies highlight more discrete examples of successful transit-oriented development that incorporates historic preservation. For example, St. Louis and Cleveland have invested in rehabilitating historic transit lines or hubs at the same time that they invested in the historic centers and neighborhoods served by those facilities. Other communities -- such as Arlington, Virginia -- took advantage of proposed new transit facilities to restore and strengthen transit-oriented development where its legacy already existed. Major cities such as Washington, D.C. and Chicago, Illinois, planned station area redevelopment around historic resources along transit rail routes. Thus preservation becomes not only an activity to rescue existing historic resources in the urban core but also to restore the traditional forms that serve walking and transit in newer, more recently settled suburban centers and neighborhoods.
Even in auto-dependent regions of the country, such as the Sunbelt, governments and private developers are recognizing the wisdom of traditional development and historic resources as centerpieces for revitalization and transit investment. The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG), with jurisdiction over a 16-county area that includes Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton, believes that the historic transit-supportive form of major downtowns can and should be replicated throughout the region. The historic farming community of Plano, which has grown practically overnight into an affluent, burgeoning city in its own right, is currently testing NCTCOG's assumptions with neotraditional planning, mixed-use development, and preservation of its small historic downtown as an integral part of its light rail transit investment.
The communities profiled in this book all show a conscious, citywide or regional commitment to build on preservation and adaptive reuse of historic resources as vital signs. Transit officials, city and regional planners, and private developers in these communities are aware that to be successful they had to "do it all:" promote preservation while encouraging redevelopment, encourage community input and acceptance while making sure the process didn't bog down or show insufficient progress, expand and diversify travel choices without putting the transportation cart before the land use horse; ascertain financial viability for transit and development projects while maintaining adequate public involvement and making decisions for the public good. The complex trade-offs and sophisticated partnerships that TOD calls for cannot take place without a concerted, ongoing commitment to an overall vision and redevelopment program.
Cities and downtown organizations are reaching beyond the immediate central business district to capture and enhance the revitalization benefits of nearby older neighborhoods. These neighborhoods often act as "whole-cloth" transit-oriented developments, demonstrating that transit-supportive density and residential desirability are not mutually exclusive, that good walking streets and easy access to transit are neighborhood characteristics as sought-after by homebuyers as good schools and other amenities; and that the irreplaceable historic character of these close-in neighborhoods, combined with their capacity to provide housing and homes for working families, makes them indispensable elements of any strategy to boost jobs and services downtown.
Cultural and historic resources make an essential contribution to urban and community revitalization, and to transit wherever it is part of the revitalization effort. The future of a downtown rests to a great degree on a willingness to invest in its past. In many cities across America, a commitment to a revitalized future rooted in historic preservation is being pursued side by side with the revitalization of public transit. They support one another, and together they support a strengthened core as the foundation of a successful regional transit system.
"The bottom line: Today's transit-oriented planners increasingly acknowledge the wisdom of history, that what worked for the train spotters of yesterday holds the best promise of working for future rail riders.
And in linking transit to users, these planners are connecting to the American past of sensible town planning -- and putting increasing weight on the oldest of transportation vehicles: the human foot."CHRISTINE KREYLING,
WRITING IN PLANNING JANUARY, 2001
TRAVEL CHOICE COMES TO NORTH TEXAS
The Metroplex is typical of many Southwestern regions: big and rapidly growing bigger; with a strong, diverse economy; and dependent on an auto-oriented transportation system that feeds the spread of development ever outward. In recent years, the Metroplex has committed itself to regional public transit and travel choice, as necessary for continued economic prosperity. The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG), a voluntary association of local governments that is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Metroplex, has devised its long-term transportation plan to guide the expenditure of federal, state, and local funds for transportation improvements in ways that will encourage more economical land use and sustainable development.
Mobility 2025: The Metropolitan Development Plan, developed by NCTCOG's Regional Transportation Council, defines four sustainable development categories: strategic urban development, integrated land-use planning/urban design, transit-oriented development, and access management. The plan includes financial support for local initiatives to revitalize town centers, create mixed-use growth centers, and promote transit- and pedestrian-oriented developments as well as infill and brownfield reclamation. The plan will help local government complement rail investments with coordinated investments in park-and-ride, bicycle, and pedestrian facilities, and other means of promoting access to public transit.
The Metroplex faces challenges to maintaining these efforts. Although downtown revitalization has taken hold in both major cities, developers often still prefer to build out where land is plentiful and inexpensive. Many residents of the Metroplex still seem willing to withstand air quality problems, traffic congestion, and long commutes in order to indulge a strong preference for driving alone.
Both Dallas and Fort Worth have stunning historic architecture in their downtowns and nearby cultural districts, including National Historic Landmarks and National Register-listed resources, from the Fort Worth Stockyards and commercial area to Dallas's 277-acre Fair Park Cultural District, where Art Deco museum and exhibit buildings constructed for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition have been reused for contemporary art and science museums.
The older neighborhoods of Dallas and Fort Worth are eclectic treasure troves of vernacular residential architecture, including late Victorian gingerbread houses and Prairie-style houses with generous front porches, and numerous duplex townhouses from the 1920s through the 1950s that increase population density without affecting the quiet residential character of tree-lined streets near downtown.
Since the early 1980s, a small but muscular cadre of private entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and city residents in both Dallas and Fort Worth have established a welcoming culture for historic preservation and adaptive reuse in and near downtown, demonstrating to the cities and the public at large the economic and community benefits of preserving the unique character and sense of place of neighborhoods and commercial centers. The region's plans for growth include revitalization of Dallas and Fort Worth, cities where the historic structures are concentrated, where historic preservation has value, and where the impulse for transportation choice is strongest. Multiple goals are being pursued side by side, and the unfolding of it all is worth a good look.
Image: Historic buildings enliven the streetscape along the Dallas Transitway Mall.
The phenomenon of central business district revitalization advancing hand in hand with the growth of the regional rail transit system is evident in Dallas and reinforces the essential interdependence of these phenomena. Downtown Dallas is determined to recover its former preeminent position as the region's center of employment, services, entertainment, and amenities, and to reestablish the downtown's interaction with its historic urban neighborhoods and first-ring suburbs.
Dallas began as a humble trading post on 614 acres at the fork of the Trinity River. Although for decades it was scoffed at as a "one-horse town," Dallas experienced a population explosion with the coming of the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1872. Thereafter, it quickly developed as a premier center of banking and commerce and an international gateway for the oil and livestock trades, as well as a center for retail, new technologies of the day such as the telegraph, and culture.
When a headquarters for the Magnolia Petroleum Company was built in the 1920s, it was the tallest building in Texas, and remained so for two decades. Dallasites routinely bragged that it was the biggest building south of Washington, D.C. Its striking rooftop oil derrick holding a huge neon red Pegasus -- now rebuilt and again lighting the evening sky -- continues to serve as an icon of the city's past.
Brash, business-savvy, and family-friendly Dallas has long been one of the country's choice places to live. Its unique blend of bright city lights and downhome Texas culture complement an uncanny ability to recover economically from setbacks that might send other cities reeling, from the S&L crisis of the 1980s to the more recent national plummet of the high-tech sector. Banking, fashion, film, and innovative retail and restaurant concepts such as the Container Store and Chili's chain of restaurants have kept Dallas's economic base secure.
The very strengths of this booming Texas city have presented challenges to its development of a mature identity and sense of its own history. Dallas began to define this identity for itself earlier in the century when it adopted the central elements of the Kessler Plan, an early growth management model for the city created in 1911. Initially intended to address the periodic and problematic flooding of the Trinity River, the Kessler plan also created marvelous green space in central Dallas and developed a straightforward grid for downtown.
But the deeply rooted regard for private property and business development rights, local zoning that strongly promoted single-use development, and abundant land at the city's fringes have made big exurban development irresistible in Big D. In the inner city, teardowns and demolitions were the order of the day during much of the 1960s and 1970s in the name of progress, defined by increased auto access to and from downtown via North Central Expressway and other highways and arterials. In and around downtown, many historic areas were simply bypassed and important contributing buildings were boarded up or underused, resulting in at least partial "mothballing" of some of Dallas's finest historic resources.
The sense that preservation of historic structures was vital to the city's well being grew in Dallas during the 1970s and 1980s, as in most American cities, in response to the loss or neglect of important landmarks. The first historic preservation ordinance was adopted in 1973, establishing a landmarks commission and the Swiss Avenue Historic District. The West End Historic District in downtown was created shortly thereafter. The demolition of the elegant Art Deco Dr. Pepper headquarters on Mockingbird Lane in 1996, just days after it was designated a local landmark -- and the near-loss of its locally beloved clock tower, showing the traditional Dr. Pepper break times of 10, 2, and 4 -- stimulated interest in a stronger historic preservation ordinance for the City of Dallas. Today the tower still stands in front of a sensitively designed Kroger's grocery store on the old Dr. Pepper site, and across the street from Mockingbird Station, a mixed-use transit station redevelopment.
In 1996 Councilwoman Veletta Forsythe Lill convened a coalition of preservationists, developers, and other citizens to develop a new ordinance that strengthened protections for historic places, revised the rules for historic designations, and established a preservation fund. The City Council unanimously passed the ordinance in January 2000. The combination of a stronger preservation ordinance, city property tax abatements, and federal historic preservation tax credits has stimulated greater interest among private developers in restoration and adaptive reuse of many downtown Dallas landmarks. A former department store was developed into residences and an urban campus for six different colleges. The beautiful Majestic Theatre and many other significant historic structures have been renovated and adaptively reused in the downtown Dallas revitalization campaign. The Central Dallas Association, with over 150 member companies, promotes the interests of downtown and works closely with city government, DART, and other public-private partners on behalf of economic growth and revitalization.
Image: Southside on Lamar transforms the historic Sears Catalog Center into a major mixed-use, mixed-income transit oriented development.
Former Mayor Ron Kirk wrote last year about the mix of motivations that are promoting historic preservation in Dallas. In addition to the obvious contributions to economic development prompted by attractive tax incentives, there is also a growing realization in Dallas that "the places of our past add to the fabric of our community. The past is becoming a part of our future." Kirk and others acknowledge the work of an extensive public-private partnership that includes DART, city government, the business community, creative developers, dedicated homeowners in the historic districts, and private organizations such as Preservation Dallas and the Friends of Fair Park.
Dallas area voters rejected the idea of an area-wide transit system for Dallas and Fort Worth in the late 1970s, largely because the proposal was too expensive, premature, and not particularly well thought out. But by 1983 Dallas voters and those from thirteen other cities in the area had approved a one-cent sales tax dedicated to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) for public transit. Citizens also exercised patience and understanding during the 13 years it took to plan, build, and open the 20-mile light rail starter system.
The North Central (12.3 miles) and Northeast (11.2 miles) corridor extensions opened in 2002, under budget and six months ahead of schedule. The expansion to North Dallas, Richardson, Garland, and Plano underscores the authentic regional nature of the DART rail system. The opening of the stations brings the DART system to 44 miles and 34 stations, completing one of the largest rail expansion projects in North America.
An article in the May 2001 issue of Urban Land noted that public transit in Dallas has become ever more important as traffic conditions and air quality have grown steadily worse. Traffic delays in Dallas increased by 37 percent between 1995 and 1999. Population in the region grew by 10 percent while vehicle miles traveled increased by 18 percent. The Dallas central business district was in deep decline as jobs moved further from the city core.
Community leaders and voters embarked on an ambitious plan to build 96 miles of light rail by 2016, 22 miles of commuter rail, and 110 miles of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes; as well as to undertake related efforts, including Intelligent Transportation Systems and Travel Demand Management. The plan included aggressive economic development along light rail corridors to promote transit use and rebuild downtown and urban neighborhoods.
In 2000, 77 percent of area voters approved a $2.4 billion bond issue, the largest of its kind ever approved in Texas, to expand and accelerate DART's light rail system. The bonds are guaranteed by future sales tax revenues. A Federal Transit Administration Full Funding Grant Agreement of $333 million under the New Starts Program is a critical element in the financial arrangements supporting the current doubling of the DART light rail starter system. The starter system alone has exceeded everyone's expectations in terms of ridership and economic development. While recession and job losses in the region produced a 10.5 percent drop in bus ridership in 2002, a 19.3 percent increase in DART rail and a 58.3 percent rise in trips on Trinity Railway Express helped keep systemwide ridership declines to just under 2 percent.
A recession-induced decline in sales tax revenues, which represents 88 percent of DART's income, may force another one-year delay in the next phase of its light rail expansion of 22 miles and 16 stations northwest to Carrollton and southeast to Buckner Boulevard. Part of the expansion anticipates federal financial participation through the New Starts Program and part will be supported with local funds.
Image: Historic buildings at the former Sears Catalog facility are part of the Matthews Southwest transit-oriented development at DART's Cedars Station.
DART's system expansion plans and its other improvements are in a foot race with clogged roads and deteriorating air quality. In addition to light rail expansion, DART's growing miles of HOV lanes, investments that reduce emissions from the bus fleet, pedestrian and bus access to the rail system, and development in the vicinity of transit stations are working together to lower the rate of growth of vehicle miles traveled.
Centered on Main Street and the mixed-use infill and redevelopment projects nearby, downtown Dallas is being transformed. The principal ingredients are light rail and attractive, convenient access between the light rail system and retail, offices, residences, government and personal services, entertainment, and amenities.
The Central Business District's light rail corridor -- the Transitway Mall -- is the spine of DART's system and reflects the transit agency's commitment to the reestablishment of Dallas as the hub of the region's economic, social, and cultural life. Historic Dallas Union Station and a major bus transfer station near the West End transit stop provide intermodal connections. Stations are within walking distance of major employers and attractions, and are connected to many bus routes.
Joel Warren Barna wrote in Texas Architect in 1999 that DART's economic development operations since the 1980s have been based on the concept that public-private partnerships -- directly supporting rail transit -- can create new patterns of urban development. DART has in effect seeded its own operating efficiency by stimulating greater density around its stations and their adjacent neighborhoods.
Like many cities in America, Dallas and its sister cities in North Texas make extensive use of tax increment financing for needed public improvements in areas adjacent to transit stations. City, county, and school districts forgo revenue increases on the growing value of property in the TIF districts and agree instead to devote new revenues to paying off bonds that provide public improvements within the district.
The six-story, 65,000-square-foot Awalt Building stands adjacent to DARTs CBD Transitway Mall at the West End Station, the system's busiest, and is home to Slingshot Communications' 50 employees, a ground-floor restaurant, and other commercial tenants. Built in the early years of the 20th century, the building was abandoned in the 1980s. When Slingshot started looking for a new home downtown, the Awalt was in the worst shape of all the buildings the company looked at and required the greatest leap of faith. Now Slingshot boasts that the building is "located on the corner of the 19th and 21st centuries" and has made the building's renovation for high-tech use a cornerstone of its company identity (to view information about the Awalt Building on Slingshot's web site, go to http://www.davidandgoliath.com/).
Slingshot Communications wanted to be downtown, particularly in the West End. It worked with the Dallas Landmarks Commission's West End Task Force, and was greatly influenced by the presence of light rail on the doorstep of the Awalt Building, and by the location's pedestrian-friendly character.
The City of Dallas was greatly interested in the redevelopment of this dilapidated eyesore. Slingshot Communications sought advice from a full range of city officials, especially those responsible for historic preservation projects, before making an offer to the Awalt's owner. The advertising agency was able to move into its top-floor office space just ten months after purchase. Extensive early consultations, hiring the services of an architect experienced in historic preservation work, and maintaining a good working relationship with city officials, helped keep Slingshot's surprises to a minimum.
Challenges to the project included reconciling historic preservation requirements with universal access needs under the Americans with Disabilities Act, plus other unexpected costs, but the company's attitude was, "Why buy a 1905 building if you don't want it to look like a 1905 building?" Federal historic preservation tax credits and a ten-year abatement of city and county property taxes helped to make the numbers work, and the company became an owner-tenant of the building with monthly mortgage payments no greater than the rent it had previously paid. Twenty percent of Slingshot's employees use transit, and the company provides both a transit benefit and reimburses transit riders for a few lunches per month.
Jeremy Leonard of Slingshot tells the story of a restaurant that expressed interest in the ground-floor commercial space but held off making an offer in order to reexamine demographics. A short time later, the restaurant signed a letter of intent. All it really needed to do, the restaurant said, was to count the number of people who passed the location every day, on foot and light rail, who would be reading its on-site advertising.
Image: The historic Awalt Building was in serious disrepair when Slingshot Communications purchased the building for adaptive reuse.
Adjacent to DART's Cedars Station, immediately southeast of downtown, Matthews Southwest has developed a 39-acre parcel, the centerpiece of which is the historic nine-story Sears Catalog Center, opened in 1910. The $75 million development includes 455 lofts that occupy 900,000 square feet, 120,000 square feet of office space, and 34,000 square feet for retail and other arts related uses in a ground-floor retail arcade running the length of the building along a former railroad tunnel.
In addition to federal historic preservation tax credits and property tax abatements from the city, Matthews Southwest secured a low interest loan from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in return for setting aside 20 percent of the 455 lofts for below-market-rate rentals. All of these incentives helped make the financing possible. The Sears Catalog Center and other buildings within the old Sears compound had been designated both Dallas and National Historic Landmarks.
South Side at Lamar has stimulated other economic development projects in the immediate vicinity of Cedars Station, including a new Dallas police headquarters, an $18 million Gilleys country-western entertainment complex in two existing structures, and other entertainment and amenity facilities.
Both historic preservation and easy access to public transit have made this major development possible. Pete Coughlin, development coordinator for the project, observed, "DART was a key in getting the project funded and in bringing people here. We are creating a 24-hour environment, and DART makes that possible." Coughlin also remarked that residents enjoy living in an historic building and appreciate its historic interior features: fluted columns, natural ceilings, original maple floors, and exposed brick walls.
At first a small farming community, Plano developed into a city in the 1870s after the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. From 1907 to 1948 it was connected to Dallas, its neighbor to the south, by the North Texas Interurban. After the demise of rail service and an explosion of residential growth to the north and west, Plano's old downtown stagnated. Light rail service has returned to Plano along the same right-of-way that promoted its growth late in the 19th century, and helped sustain it through the first half of the 20th.
Anticipating the arrival of light rail, Plano has been planning and preparing for years to transform downtown back into a transit village. The city's turn-of-the-century historic district is adjacent to the new Plano Station, and restoration of the city's historic structures in the station area is a conscious part of the redevelopment plan supported by a tax increment financing district and property tax abatements.
In addition to restoring historic resources, Plano approved a major new development called East Side Village, designed to match the historic character of the surrounding 19th century architecture. East Side Village contains 500 residential units, 40,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, and a 2,000-square-foot city conference center. Apartments rent from $600 to $1,200 per month. Plano's station area development is pedestrian-friendly and in harmony with the principles of the modern transit village.
"Our goal is to transform downtown Plano into an urban, transit-oriented town center by expanding business, housing, and the arts within one-quarter mile of the station," says Frank Turner, executive director of the Plano Development Business Center. In support of Plano's plan, the DART station has bus bays and a kiss-and-ride, but no long-term parking. The station is designed to fit the look and feel of the downtown. A municipal center, courthouse, and school district offices are within walking distance, as are a park and single-family homes.
The redevelopment of McKinney Avenue in Uptown Dallas in the early 1980s included restoration of its brick pavement. During the work, the double tracks of an old streetcar line were unearthed. Volunteers from the retail and business community donated funds to determine the feasibility of reinstating the trolley in the neighborhood. The McKinney Avenue Transit Authority was created in 1983, and four vintage streetcars were purchased and carefully restored.
In 1989, for the first time in 33 years, a streetcar ran under its own power on 2.8 miles of newly restored tracks on McKinney Avenue. The big news for devotees of historic trolleys as well as transportation choice advocates is that the McKinney Avenue Trolley is now linked at its northern end to DART's light rail system at the Cityplace station. DART patrons can transfer to the streetcar to tour McKinney Avenue restaurants, art galleries, boutiques, and the new West Village -- a transit village that combines condominium residences with upscale shopping and dining.
MATA expects to construct another expansion in the near future, southward to link up with the West End Historic District. The Texas Department of Transportation has allocated a total of $6.4 million of its federal transportation enhancements funds to help the non-profit organization that owns and operates the trolley.
Dallas and Fort Worth created the Trinity Railway Express to reestablish a commuter rail connection that linked them together from 1902 to 1934, when the Northern Texas Traction Company shut down its intercity line. In autumn 2001, full service resumed between the cities' two historic passenger terminals, Dallas Union Station and the Texas and Pacific Railroad Station in Fort Worth.
Dallas and Fort Worth jointly purchased the old Rock Island Line right-of-way in 1983 for $34 million and created TRE as a joint venture of their transit agencies. Service was inaugurated on the line's first leg at the end of 1996, from Dallas Union Station west to South Irving. This phase was funded largely from DART's one percent sales tax, Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant funds, and the sale of usage rights to rail freight operators.
Tarrant County, for which Fort Worth is the county seat, assumed responsibility for the $184 million needed for the 25-mile second phase of the project, using a combination of Federal Transit Administration New Starts and other program funds, a second CMAQ grant, sales tax receipts from Fort Worth and the other area cities sharing the service.
TRE has become very popular. Ridership grew by 58 percent in the first year of full operations, to over 2 million, supported in part by the train's impressive intermodal, downtown connections.
In Dallas, TRE links up with DART's Red and Blue Lines at Union Station. Fort Worth built a new centrally located Intermodal Transit Center that also serves Amtrak and Greyhound Bus and provides bus and shuttle connections to major Fort Worth destinations. TRE offers shuttle bus service to DFW airport from one of its stations to help attract riders from among the over 50,000 people who are employed at or near DFW. A combined DART and TRE Victory Station is under construction just west of the West End in Dallas, adjacent to American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas professional basketball and hockey teams. A temporary TRE station presently offers service to the teams' home games.
Extension of TRE and the development of additional commuter rail service figure prominently in multimodal transportation planning throughout the Metroplex, but especially in Fort Worth, where the future rail component of the city's transportation plan decision is still evolving.
• Historic buildings in the central business district are important orientation points for rail station siting. DART's station site decisions in the 1980s took into account the major redevelopment of the West End Historic District and Dallas's Union Station to put the "there back there" as the rail system was put back in place.
• Business developers can -- and do -- support transit-oriented revitalization if the public sector sends the right signals and offers incentives. Dallas, DART, participating cities, and NCTCOG understand the benefits of promoting economic development in station areas. Transit-related zoning and land use plans, special financial incentives, investment in public infrastructure, and urban design concepts are being used to counter the region's overall sprawling, autocentric development patterns. DART reaches out to developers to make their work easier. "We provide education, coordination with member cities, connections to other developers," says Jack Wierzenski, assistant vice president of economic development and planning for DART. "We accommodate developers any way we can."
• Strong historic preservation ordinances enhance and clarify the climate for private development. Dallas's new preservation ordinance sends a clear signal to private developers that historic resources are valued and irreplaceable elements in the city's fabric. The ordinance's establishment of a preservation fund, along with stronger tests for demolition, combines with municipal property tax abatements and other supportive city measures to stimulate investment in restoration and adaptive reuse of many downtown Dallas landmarks.
Improved access provided by DART rail stations is enhancing nearby residential and office property valuations, according to 2002 research conducted by the University of North Texas Center for Economic Development and Research. From 1997 to 2001, residential properties near DART rail stations increased in value by 39 percent more on average than comparable properties not served by rail. Office buildings near DART rail lines increased in value 53 percent more than comparable properties elsewhere. According to the Dallas Association of Realtors, "DART has been a huge economic driver in the region, and it will continue to be as the rail system expands and matures."
Now DART is also working to redress development gaps between stations. One such area is the Good Latimer Transit Mall/Deep Ellum Gateway, an area caught between the central business district and the busy arts and residential district of Deep Ellum. "Our goal is to design a station that is conducive to future development," says Jack Wierzenski, of DART. " Since we're not yet sure what developers will want to do, we're preparing the station to be very flexible and accessible. When developers come in, they'll find not barriers but accommodation. "Reinvestment in historic properties is contributing greatly to downtown's rebirth. The pragmatism generated by tax breaks, the emerging demand for loft-style housing in the heart of the city, and opportunities for creative mixed uses of older commercial buildings has helped to build a residential community of 17,000 in downtown Dallas where none existed before. Neighborhoods near downtown also benefit. Ken Hughes, president of UC Urban and the developer of the creative and highly acclaimed mixed-use project at Mockingbird Station (near where the old Dr. Pepper plant once stood), says: "The proximity of the DART station and the growing ridership made the Mockingbird Station attractive and doable, and we're not doing it halfway."
Not only are occupancy and rental rates increasing in buildings near stations throughout the system, tenants are returning to downtown from the suburbs. For example, the professional services firm KPMG, which moved out of downtown in 1992, returned a decade later and now occupies twice as much office space as before, in a building just steps from the St. Paul Station on the Transitway Mall. According to the firm that arranged the move, DART was one of the key ingredients for the consolidation of KPMG back downtown.
Fort Worth, like other returning cities, understands that its central business district is its preeminent urban village: an economically, culturally, and socially vibrant center that binds the larger community together and helps to build civic identity through its powerful sense of place. As the center city prospers, private and public investment ripples out into surrounding neighborhoods.
Fort Worth's plan for revitalization recognizes that transportation investment must be directed toward a system to manage movement within a denser urban form, so that vibrant economic growth is not strangled by the kind of mobility it generates. The city's current plan for downtown transportation is multimodal, features convenient and attractive access among modes, and relies on good public transit and good walking streets.
Historic preservation is an important part of the city's comprehensive plan and greatly influences the way the city looks at itself and its future. The city preserves historic resources to protect its quality of life, its pride of place and its sense of community. Fort Worth is committed to passing its rich and colorful history on to future generations.
Established in 1849, Fort Worth began as an army outpost and soon became the last major stop on the legendary Chisholm Trail, the dusty path where millions of cattle were driven North to market. Downtown Fort Worth came to be known as "Hell's Half Acre," a rowdy district catering to the rough cowboy trade, with gambling parlors, saloons, and dance halls. The railroad era transformed the Fort Worth Stockyards into a premier livestock center, and downtown Fort Worth grew in complexity and sophistication.
When oil began to gush in West Texas, Fort Worth was at the center of the burgeoning oil industry. Still known affectionately as "Cowtown," Fort Worth has preserved the architecture and rich heritage of its downtown through numerous redevelopments, including Sundance Square, a 20-block area featuring some of Fort Worth's oldest and architecturally unique structures, mostly turn-of-the-century storefronts. Some 50 shops, restaurants, theatres, bars, and clubs are all within walking distance of each other in Sundance Square, enhanced by attractive landscaping and brick-paved streets.
Sundance Square and its developers, the Fort Worth Bass family, are credited with launching downtown revitalization in the early 1980s. The critical truth embedded in the Bass family approach to Sundance Square is the realization that first-rate historic preservation makes first-rate places, not just in terms of buildings and streets but also the way that the denizens of the returning city use these places. Before the Bass family invested in Fort Worth's Sundance Square, the area's historic resources suffered from neglect.
In an essay published in the March 2002 issue of Urban Land magazine, Ed Bass stated an urban redevelopment principle that can be used to test the soundness of revitalization planning generally, especially as its transportation component is being devised. "Cities need to learn to capitalize on their streets, city blocks, sidewalks, storefronts, and the comings and goings of a whole variety of people engaged in a whole gamut of activities."
From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, more than $850 million in private investment was pumped into Sundance Square, with most of the risk being assumed by the Bass brothers. The extent of their investment guaranteed that the place would have the look and feel they were aiming to create. As a result, the northern end of downtown Fort Worth has 20 movie screens, an assortment of nightclubs and live theater venues, office space, several dozen restaurants, hotels, retail tenants like Barnes and Noble, and a significant infusion of new residents.
The city has also played a principal role in downtown transformation, pumping nearly $300 million in public funds into downtown projects, including federal grants. Special taxing districts have been created, property tax abatements have assisted many projects, and active organizations representing the private revitalization stakeholders, like Historic Fort Worth and Downtown Fort Worth, help round out the public-private partnership that is a hallmark of success in so many urban revitalization efforts.
The City of Fort Worth and the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (the T) jointly developed a Fort Worth Light Rail Streetcar Starter Project, a 7.6-mile, double-tracked streetcar system intended to connect Fort Worth's Intermodal Transportation Center, the Trinity Railway Express, and new bus transfer facilities downtown with Fort Worth's employment centers, major destinations, and neighborhoods. The starter project was endorsed by the City Council and the T in 2002 as the first phase of a larger streetcar system that could be implemented over the next 20 to 30 years.
The 2002 decision has been placed on hold pending a review of transportation priorities by the city's new administration. Also on hold is Fort Worth's formal application for a $92.5 million Federal Transit Administration New Starts grant, representing 50 percent of the project's total cost, for the city's locally preferred alternative, a project designed to link the central business district with the city's cultural and medical districts and several central city neighborhoods. The city's 50 percent of the project cost is expected to come from flexible federal sources like the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program, local transit sales tax revenues (half-cent as opposed to DART's 1-cent), and $62.5 million from municipal bonds. A citywide election will be needed to approve the municipal bonds, and the availability of flexible federal transportation funds is subject to the approval of the regional council of governments.
Fort Worth's extensive urban revitalization efforts are closely tied to an eventual multimodal, interdependent transportation system that will facilitate and encourage walking and good connections for the city's buses. The automobile's primacy in the city is not going to be supplanted, but investment in alternative travel choices to and from resurgent neighborhoods, downtown, and the city's key activity centers will ease auto congestion, improve air quality, and offer the capacity to reduce vehicle miles traveled.
The New Starts application, in its present form, emphasizes the regional transportation connections that light rail will give Fort Worth, its conformity to regional land use and sustainable development goals, and a firm commitment to the principles of genuine transit- oriented development: mixed use, mixed income, greater density at and near transit stops, and the best walking connections possible. The city has already enacted two mixed-use zoning classifications that are transit-supportive and consistent with the package of revitalization efforts.
Image: Meticulously restored historic buildings within Sundance Square bear out the Bass family belief that first-rate historic preservation makes first-rate places.
When an elevated segment of I-30 was torn down in 2002 and its replacement completed further south, the uncovering of Lancaster Avenue opened up an opportunity to reunite downtown. The street is a wide expanse of road that is beautifully suited to transformation into an elegant urban boulevard. Along Lancaster Avenue are architectural gems, isolated since the 1960s by a segment of I-30 that was elevated freeway, and now ready for restoration and reuse. A refurbished, beautified, and pedestrian friendly Lancaster Avenue could connect the southern end of downtown to the city's expanding cultural district just to the west.
The present terminus of TRE in Fort Worth is the Texas and Pacific Rail Passenger terminal, one of the city's premier historic landmarks. The Fort Worth Transportation Authority, which owns the first-floor waiting room and adjacent boardroom, restored them with federal transportation enhancements funding granted by the Texas Department of Transportation. The terminal building's owners tried unsuccessfully to convince the city to help renovate the upper floors into a hotel. Plans are now underway to develop those floors into 130 apartments while adding a four-story, 92-unit apartment building and parking garage east of the terminal. Both Fort Worth and Tarrant County have agreed to grant historic tax exemptions for the project.
Fort Worth's starter light rail streetcar, as presently envisioned, would connect with the T&P terminal on its north-south axis from the Sundance Square- Tarrant County Court House area to the Medical District. The terminal's restoration for in-town living is expected to quicken private revitalization efforts in the Lancaster Avenue corridor.
Public and private restoration and revitalization activities are also in full swing in Fort Worth's midtown section. Just south of the new Intermodal Transit Center (ITC), the historic Santa Fe Warehouse has been restored and reopened as the Fort Worth Rail Market. In a 23,000-square-foot canopied space between the rail market and the ITC, the T and the Fort Worth Rail Market operate an outdoor farmers' market on weekends during spring and summer. According to the market's web site (http://www.fortworthrailmarket.com) "The Fort Worth Rail Market ... builds on the synergy created by other downtown developments, including the Intermodal Transportation Center (ITC), Fort Worth Convention Center expansion, the Convention Center Plaza, Water Garden and Hyde Park improvements, and the Lancaster Avenue Redevelopment."
The Market was constructed in 120 days and opened on May 25, 2002. More than 40,000 square feet of permanent retail space is available for up to twenty year-round tenants. The expanded convention center is nearby, and Fort Worth's light rail streetcar will serve the area as the TRE already does. The city, in a partnership with the T, the U.S. General Services Administration, and Downtown Fort Worth, Inc, is also planning a new Downtown Civic Square on the site of historic 19th century Hyde Park. Only a few blocks from the Santa Fe Rail Market, the civic square will be an important element in the mix of transit- and pedestrian-connected attractions and destinations in the mid-town section of Fort Worth.
Barbara Maley, Senior Transportation Planner
North Central Texas Council of Governments
817 -695-9246
bmaley@nctcog.dst.tx.us
Fernando Costa, Planning Director
Fort Worth Planning
817-871-8042
CostaF@ci.fort-worth.tx.us
Shanon Peterson Wasielewski, Historic Preservation Planner
Fort Worth Planning
817-871-8012
WasielS@ci.fort-worth.tx.us
Melissa Waelti-Dailey, Transportation Director
Downtown Fort Worth, Inc.
817-870-1692
melissa@dfwi.org
Image: The removal of a segment of I-30 from above Lancaster Ave opens the door to reconnecting the Avenue's significant historic structures, like the Texas and Pacific Rail Passenger terminal, to downtown Fort Worth.
Fort Worth's long-discussed and much-planned light rail trolley is still years away from operation, but the urban revitalization it is being designed to serve and sustain is well underway. The urban model that NCTCOG sees as a means to build up centers of mixed-use development throughout the region has been working over the last 25 years in center city Fort Worth. Studies of the city have identified a demand for city living and a growing residential market. Both Pier 1 and Radio Shack are constructing new national headquarters downtown, and Fort Worth's nightlife is vibrant, especially in Sundance Square. Public investments in services and amenities abound. Old and historic buildings are being restored and reused.
Just one year after its grand opening, the Fort Worth Rail Market is now home to a lively mix of specialty food stores, other retail establishments, and small independent restaurants. Four retail spaces remain to be leased. David Pettit, director of development for Downtown Fort Worth, Inc., states "Current negotiations with a butcher, sausage, and deli vendor will complete the desired tenant mix outlined in the original plans for the Market. Additionally, negotiations are underway for the second floor restaurant space, offering 5,500 square feet of intimate, indoor dining and an additional 5,000 square feet of patio dining overlooking downtown." The restaurant is scheduled to open early this fall. In attracting new tenants and seasonal vendors, the management of the Rail Market has made much of nearby transportation connections and the historic value of the site and nearby attractions. Citing the 10,000 daily boardings on the Trinity Railway Express and the status of the ITC as the transportation hub for all of Tarrant County, the Fort Worth Rail Market also positions to prospective vendors as part of the "downtown synergy" that includes a mix of old and new Fort Worth, from Sundance Square to the new convention center, both just minutes away.
• Private, independent, "isolated" efforts at downtown revitalization do pay big dividends in later efforts toward transit-supportive development. Sundance Square and its developers, the Fort Worth Bass family, are credited with launching downtown revitalization in the early 1980s. According to Urban Land magazine, Fort Worth affirms the urban development theory that medium-sized cities "should focus on a specific district for revitalization, concentrating efforts to produce critical mass and more visible results." Fort Worth has demonstrated how returning cities can expand the experiences of individual district revitalization to other parts of downtown.
• Transit agencies should seek opportunities to lead and develop historic downtown areas that could serve and be served by transit. The Fort Worth Transportation Authority and leaders of the ITC effort not only were "plugged in" to develop trends and opportunities in downtown, they took leadership roles in clearing the way for transit-oriented development near the ITC and other downtown transportation facilities.
DOWNTOWN STRATEGY BUILDS ON EARLIER EFFORTS
Denver, Colorado is undergoing a renaissance of transportation choices and downtown revitalization, thanks to 40 years of visionary planning and energetic community efforts. Blueprint Denver, created in 2002, is a growth and transportation strategy for promoting and protecting the city's livability, with an emphasis on the interdependence of downtown with the historic residential neighborhoods that surround it. The citywide strategy within Blueprint Denver is focused on absorbing 109,000 new jobs and 132,000 more residents by 2022.
Built in the boom years of the mid-19th century, downtown Denver suffered from decreasing investment after the silver bust of 1893, a trend that accelerated with the ascendancy of the automobile in the first half of the 20th century. In 1965, real estate developer Dana Crawford launched a 20-year effort to save downtown from dereliction and slum clearance. Her early successes helped create a strong preservation ethic in Denver. By 1971, the city had both a landmarks commission and a private nonprofit organization, Historic Denver, Inc. In 1974 the city rezoned Lower Downtown-a threatened treasure trove of industrial and commercial architecture-for mixed use, including loft apartments and retail. A second rezoning in 1982 offered incentives for property owners to preserve historic buildings. After a seven-year struggle, Lower Downtown was designated a historic district in 1989. Denver promptly established the Lower Downtown Business Support Office to market the area to investors and manage a loan fund to help with gap financing, facade improvements, and upgrades required by building codes.
Even these positive steps still proved inadequate to stem the development pressure on downtown Denver, where high rises were being built right beside historic structures. In 2000, the city created the Downtown Denver Historic District to protect and preserve 43 historic buildings in the central business district. Many of the protected buildings were already rehabilitated and in use when the designation took effect. The new district includes the 16th Street transit mall, an international model for integrating mixed use development, transit, and historic preservation.
The city's efforts to revitalize its core and protect its historic character now have radiated beyond the boundaries of downtown. According to former Mayor Wellington Webb, who stepped down after three terms in 2003, "In downtown Denver, our history ... exists comfortably and proudly side by side with our present." Webb convened two major summits to look at how to integrate business development, transportation, housing, and historic preservation in downtown. Under his leadership, the city made sweeping changes to its zoning to encourage housing and transit-oriented development in the central business district. The city also established an office specifically to market its inventory of historic and older downtown buildings to housing developers, providing developers and investors with accurate information about properties and market conditions.
The latest manifestation of Denver's efforts to protect and enhance its downtown is Blueprint Denver, which was approved by the City Council in March 2002 by a vote of 11 to l. Blueprint Denver seeks to confront the major planning issues associated with integrating land use and transportation planning -- the first step to sound growth management.
Image: REI skillfully restored and adapted the historic Denver Tramway Power Company Building for use as its Denver flagship store.
Blueprint Denver identifies areas of stability and areas of change where growth and transit investment can be channeled to improve access to jobs, housing, and services while decreasing auto trips. Downtown Denver is an area of change and its population could grow by 30 percent during the next 20 years. Areas of stability in the plan are primarily established residential neighborhoods and their associated commercial areas. City planners have asked Denver's 77 neighborhoods to develop their own mini-blueprints. The goal of planning for these areas of stability is to let them identify and maintain their particular character while accommodating new development and redevelopment.
A focal point of Blueprint Denver's transportation strategy is to support transit-oriented development (TOD) at existing and planned stations on light-rail lines serving the city. The strategy is designed to preserve historic neighborhoods and reuse historic and architecturally significant downtown buildings. Historic buildings of the type found in downtown Denver -- mostly old warehouses and industrial/commercial spaces -- are ideally suited to retail, office space, and condo- or apartment-style housing. The city makes financing available for unconventional housing projects, and is directing its private activity bond allocations toward housing.
"My first Downtown Summit in 1991 rallied city government and preservation and business constituencies to closer collaboration on two principal strategies: developing housing and expanding historic preservation as an economic development tool."WELLINGTON WEBB
MAYOR OF DENVER
Rehabilitation of historic buildings for housing has been underway in Denver for many years. Mayor Webb supported this effort, believing that the city's revitalization depends on establishing a residential population downtown. A mainstay of Webb's strategy was to emphasize transit access and walkable streets while controlling additional downtown parking.
Although Blueprint Denver does not change zoning, it sets in motion a process for a substantial revision of Denver's zoning code, which is essential to the plan's success and crucial to the achievement of regional transportation objectives.
Blueprint Denver was assembled with extensive participation by the city's transportation agency, members of the council, 46 members of an advisory committee, and many hundreds of other Denver citizens who appeared at public hearings, open houses in each of the 13 council districts, and neighborhood discussions.
Denver has a seven-county Regional Transportation District (RTD) with bonding authority to improve, maintain, and operate Denver's mass transit system. The RTD works with the region's metropolitan planning organization, the Denver Regional Council of Governments. The RTD recently took the lead in encouraging TOD by establishing a "TOD shop" to help developers move their projects along.
Two private nonprofit groups have been closely involved in shaping both Denver's historic preservation and its transit future: Historic Denver, Inc. (HDI) and the Downtown Denver Partnership, Inc. (DDP). HDI was founded by citizens in 1970 and has focused much of its attention on preservation of the urban core and close-in neighborhoods. DDP has represented downtown businesses, property owners, and employees since 1955, and has long advocated for transportation choices that support revitalization and historic preservation. DDP supports the region's current transit planning and the redevelopment of Union Station into an intermodal center.
The city has also been blessed with two mayors who placed priority on transit-oriented and preservation-minded revitalization downtown. In 1984 Mayor Federico Peña convened a committee of civic and business leaders to help plan the city's future. The committee and the mayor's sustained leadership were instrumental in designating Lower Downtown a historic district in 1988. Mayor Peña declared Lower Downtown the best opportunity for jump-starting the revitalization of downtown Denver, and made downtown historic district designation the number one issue for the city, backed by an extensive coalition of supporters.
According to Jennifer Moulton, former director of the Community Planning and Development Agency, the objectives of Blueprint Denver are not only implementation of light rail along well-planned corridors, but also improved bus service, special highway High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes, commuter rail, and improved street design for walking and bicycling. The plan stresses the importance of residential and commercial activities near major transit stops.
The city's mass transit system includes more than 16 miles of light rail, the first segment of which began operation in 1994, and will total 35 miles on completion. Nearly 200 bus routes run throughout the region, serving 64 free park-and-rides and hundreds of bus stops. More than 65 bus trips per hour arrive in downtown Denver during peak periods.
Metropolitan Denver's Transportation Expansion Project (T-Rex), a $1.7 billion undertaking, consists of new light rail transit and highway improvements on I-25 between Denver and major destinations to the southeast of the city. T-Rex will reconstruct 17 miles of I-25, including bridges and interchanges, and is constructing 19 miles of double-track light rail with 13 transit stations in the Southeast Corridor to Douglas County, with a spur along I-225 in Arapahoe County. RTD and the Federal Transit Administration entered into a Full Funding Grant Agreement in November 2000, which committed $525 million in Section 5309 New Starts funds to the project.
Waiting in the wings for voter approval is RTD's accelerated 10-year plan that proposes to spend $4.3 billion for light rail, commuter rail, and express bus lanes in the Denver metropolitan area. RTD also proposes to double the number of parking spaces at stations along the existing southwest line and to double parking spaces planned for the T-Rex line in southeast Denver. The plan is being called "Fastrack" and must be approved by metro-area voters because of the 0.4 percent sales tax hike needed to help pay for it. It is likely to be on the ballot in 2004.
Image: The magnificently restored Denver Dry Goods Building, a mixed-use project of the Jonathon Rose Companies, stands at the heart of multi-modal downtown Denver. The restoration took advantage of 23 sources of financing.
Beginning in the early 1990s, large second-story additions or "pop-tops" became common in Denver's historic inner-city neighborhoods as owners sought ways to expand the typical two-bedroom Denver bungalow. This phenomenon of tear-downs or scrape-offs has become commonplace across the United States, and large suburban-style homes are replacing historic bungalows all over the nation. The National Trust for Historic Preservation attempted to draw national attention to the phenomenon by placing Teardowns on its 2002 List of America's Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places.
The zoning in many neighborhoods surrounding Denver's central business district permits much greater density than is currently in place. High-rise apartments and condominiums could destroy the character of the inner city's historic residential neighborhoods, with a density growth well above what existing residents are willing to tolerate. Blueprint Denver acknowledges that zoning in these areas of stability must be changed, and the city is working to effect these changes.
Blueprint Denver also envisions that the city's 77 neighborhoods will develop their own mini-blueprints. In some neighborhoods, local historic districts are being proposed. Along with stronger protections to prevent demolitions and out-of-scale additions, the advocates for these historic neighborhoods will also help identify appropriate infill sites and develop flexible guidelines to encourage compatible new construction.
Residents and preservationists in Denver have been successful in protecting the high-quality architecture, mature landscaping, and pedestrian orientation of traditional, historic neighborhoods. These neighborhoods radiate a powerful sense of place that benefits the city in terms of consumer reinvestment, community stability, and tourism.
The Denver Downtown Partnership has provided an overview of residential areas of downtown and some of Denver's close-in neighborhoods, some of which is quoted here.
There is a common perception that the majority of downtown Denver's housing growth during the 1990s happened in Lower Downtown. However, the rate of residential growth in the upper end of downtown -- in what is often referred to as the central business district -- has been on par with that of Lower Downtown. Upper Downtown has a population of approximately 3,000 people, while Lower Downtown's population is about 2,200.
In recent years, several vacant office buildings in the central business district of downtown Denver have been renovated into apartment and condominium projects along 15th, 16th, and 17th streets -- Baldwin Lofts, the Denver Dry Goods Building Lofts, the A.T. Lewis & Rio Grande Lofts, Boston Lofts, and Bank Lofts. Four of these projects include below-market-rate apartments for downtown's workforce. Two recent developments on Champa Street include the Buerger Brothers Industrial Lofts and the Chamber Apartments next door. The upper end of Downtown now has approximately 1,550 rental units and 650 for-sale units.
Lower Downtown -- or LoDo, as it is commonly called -- is in the oldest part of Denver, founded in 1858 by General William Larimer. Today LoDo is a vibrant 25-block urban neighborhood comprised of brick warehouses, industrial buildings and commercial structures that have been renovated into offices, lofts and retail space.
LoDo housing options range from million-dollar lofts to below-market rate apartments. New construction for housing has begun as the number of vacant buildings in Lower Downtown available for renovation shrinks to nearly zero.
The most notable construction projects in Lower Downtown are four new office buildings that were recently built on the former sites of surface parking lots. One of these developments -- 16 Market Square -- includes 25 residential lofts on its top floors.
Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTD) purchased Union Station in August 2001, along with 20 acres of adjacent prime real estate for just under $50 million, after about a year of intense negotiations with the station's three owners. The century-old rail facility, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, ranks among Denver's outstanding historic structures. It will become the heart and hub of a regional, multimodal transportation system and a premier destination in its own right in the midst of all sorts of destinations.
RTD's financial partners in the purchase are the City and County of Denver, and the Denver Regional Council of Governments that, along with the Colorado Department of Transportation, approved $23 million in federal funds. An impressive team, dubbed the Union Station Alliance, was assembled to develop a master plan for the depot and the surrounding 18.5 acres of land in accord with a multi-modal transportation vision that includes light rail, commuter rail, Amtrak, local and regional buses, the 16th Street mall shuttle, bicycle facilities, and taxi cab facilities.
The terminal will become the gateway to Denver, just as it was years ago when as many as 80 passenger trains pulled in each day. In an interview with the Denver Business Journal, Jennifer Moulton, the city's former planning director, called it Denver's "front door". A rail line to Denver International Airport, currently served by RTD buses to downtown, will be a part of the planning, as well as a link to the nearby Platte River Trolley, with its antique street cars.
The Central Platte Valley neighborhood is largely a blank slate at this time, a 120-acre expanse to the west of downtown Denver that is home to about 360 residential units. After spending most of this century marked by railyards, warehouses, viaducts, and garbage dumps, the Central Platte Valley area is evolving into an exciting, mixed-use urban neighborhood with more than 2,000 housing units, and more than 3 million square feet of offices, shops, restaurants, and hotels. The first housing units between Union Station and the South Platte River are now occupied and more are under construction.
In 2001, shuttle service on the 16th Street Mall was extended through Lower Downtown and behind Union Station to the Central Platte Valley. The extension brings closer access to the Millennium Bridge, a pedestrian span over the consolidated train track that remains in the Central Platte Valley. Central Platte Valley's residents have a 10-minute walk into Lower Downtown and Denver's central business district.
To enhance access in the area, there are plans to develop an intermodal facility that handles passenger trains, regional buses, light rail, and commuter rail, creating a downtown hub for Denver's metropolitan transportation system. A 1.5-mile light rail spur recently began operating in Central Platte Valley, linking the Auraria Higher Education Center and downtown, with stops at entertainment destinations (such as the Pepsi Center) and future housing and commercial developments.
Although the land on the east side of the South Platte River is now taking shape with the first phase of development, the west side of the Central Platte Valley between the river and I-25 has characteristic red-brick buildings with ground-floor retail and restaurants and residential lofts above. Commons Park West, a new construction 340-unit apartment complex, is the largest of recent developments.
In 1991 downtown Denver was full of boarded-up buildings. Today, more than 50 formerly derelict structures have been put back in service, mostly as downtown housing. The downtown has attracted $158 million in investment for historic preservation alone, including only $16 million in public funds. Virtually all of downtown Denver is already transit-oriented development.
More than 10 percent of the metropolitan region's workforce is employed in downtown Denver. Almost half of those workers commute to downtown via transit, carpooling, or other alternatives to driving. And 54,000 people use the 16th Street Transit Mall every weekday.
Construction of new residences and population have increased in and near downtown during the past decade -- the population of Lower Downtown alone doubled from about 1,000 mostly low-income residents in 1990 to about 2,500 with a much higher median income in 2000. The downtown's revenue base has also improved: Denver is the 20th largest city in the country but has the 10th largest downtown in terms of commercial and retail space.
For the most part, the neighborhoods near downtown have not experienced the cycles of serious disinvestment that usually plague inner-city neighborhoods in other communities. Denver's core neighborhoods, especially the historic ones, are increasingly popular among home buyers. More than 67,000 people live within a one mile radius of downtown in these neighborhoods. Prices are rising, with the result that the inner-ring neighborhoods are endangered by their own success. Many newcomers to the city's historic neighborhoods are altering or demolishing homes to build suburban-style dwellings with larger amounts of square footage. Through zoning controls and the Blueprint Denver effort, the city is moving decisively to support preservation of the scale and character of neighborhoods in and near downtown (see "Protecting Denver's Inner-City Neighborhoods," page 27).
• Build on previous efforts and successes in historic preservation, housing, transportation, and downtown revitalization. Denver is drawing on a rich history of such efforts to bring in stake-holders and create new models for wedding transportation choices and sustainable development downtown.
• Promote individual leadership, and give credit where credit is due. Without the early efforts of developers like Dana Crawford and preservationists like Lisa Purdy, and without the leadership and vision of Mayors Federico Pena and Wellington Webb, Denver's downtown might never have become the crown jewel it is today.
• Coordinate downtown efforts within a regional framework. Planning and financial mechanisms are needed at a regional level to create, improve, and sustain a living downtown. Denver recognized this lesson in its early efforts to create a Lower Downtown historic district.
Ellen Ittelson
Denver Community Planning and Development Agency
720-865-2915
Brendon Harrington, Transportation Program Manager
Downtown Denver Partnership
303-534-6161
brendon@downtowndenver.com
Kathleen Brooker, President
Historic Denver, Inc.
303-534-5288
kbrooker@historicdenver.org
MAKING ROOM FOR CHANGE IN A MATURE CITY
The interplay among public transit, transit-supportive development, community revitalization, and historic preservation in San Diego is still taking shape. Although the city has made remarkable progress in offering transportation choices and a downtown design to support them, San Diego still struggles to develop employment and residential population in its center city and older, close-in neighborhoods. In a city renowned both for its excellent planning and its unique character, historic preservation has not become a serious organizing principle for revitalization efforts. Yet the benefits of historic preservation to the city are everywhere apparent.
San Diego was the first city on the West Coast to electrify its trolleys, and among the first to respond broadly to the problems our auto-dependent society has inflicted upon cities. The city reused old rail rights-of-way to create a new trolley system in the 1970s. Because these routes link historically significant destinations that still define the community's character today, San Diego's historic places are uniquely positioned to contribute to smart growth.
A major planning effort for the city, the City of Villages, could have a profound impact on historic resources in downtown and nearby neighborhoods. The San Diego Association of Governments, the metropolitan planning organization, estimates that the city's population will increase approximately 284,000 by 2020 and an additional 150,000 homes will be needed to house new residents. City of Villages was San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy's fundamental policy response to the land shortage and housing needs. The intent of City of Villages is to concentrate much of the needed growth in the city's established neighborhoods. Less than 10 percent of San Diego's 331 square miles is still raw, developable land. Additional housing has to compete with other demands in neighborhoods that want to control levels of density and congestion, address deteriorating public infrastructure, stimulate and maintain community services, and create attractive public spaces.
The City of Villages planning process has led downtown and neighborhood leaders to take a long look at the city core's needs and special character, and has prompted both the city and the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB) to consider ways to boost transit's contribution to downtown revitalization. Although City of Villages acknowledges the importance of neighborhood and civic character, historic resources, and transit-oriented design, historic preservation is not a fundamental pillar for planning.
Specific development projects may point the way toward a greater reliance on historic preservation as a means to smart growth and revitalization, at least in downtown and nearby neighborhoods. For example, construction of a new baseball park for the San Diego Padres illustrates the benefits of historic preservation to downtown revitalization and public transportation (see "The Ballpark District," page 36). The new ballpark is located in a promising area of historic warehouses, adjacent to the city's world-renowned Gaslamp Quarter, a National Historic District.
Founded on a site that had been inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years, including the La Jolla, Yuman, and Shoshonean, San Diego became a Spanish mission in 1602. The first colonists arrived 175 years later, including military families from the coastal fortress known as the Presidio. In the 1840s Americans gained a foothold in San Diego as a result of the winning of California by the United States and the 1848 gold rush. In 1850 downtown San Diego was established as New Town and the city was incorporated. Today the military and the Catholic Church are still active participants in San Diego's economy and culture, linking the city to its colonial past.
San Diego's transit history reaches back to the 1870s. Initially horsepowered, later expanded and electrified, the trolley system gave way to buses in the middle of the last century. The city's walkable downtown declined in proportion to suburban expansion, until by the late 1960s, downtown properties were not even generating enough tax revenue to cover basic city services.
In 1972, then-Mayor Pete Wilson outlined an aggressive program for revitalizing the physically and economically blighted downtown. Public and private redevelopment organizations pursued a plan to bring residents, retail, and commercial businesses back to downtown; create a strong job base; and reestablish downtown's premier role as a lively and attractive regional hub for employment, services, arts, culture, government, entertainment, and living.
The rebirth of the San Diego Trolley in the 1970s and the civic commitment to downtown revitalization advanced concurrently, one contributing to the success of the other. Downtown redevelopment required that the area be accessible from throughout the region, and light rail transit offered an additional travel choice reminiscent of days gone by. San Diego's historic and very popular Gaslamp Quarter was one of the earlier community revitalization efforts that helped to establish the role of historic preservation in the redevelopment plan.
Image: Outstanding restorations of the Gaslamp Quarter's historic buildings shape the area's character and contribute to its walkability.
In the 1970s California State Senator John Mills, a transit visionary and ardent historic preservationist, was instrumental in passing state legislation to bring light rail back to San Diego. The legislation created two revenue streams for light rail: a quarter-cent state sales tax rebated to local governments, and constitutional access to state gasoline taxes. The legislation also created the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB) to design and build the system.
The statute gave MDTB just five years to get the system up and running. With $18 million, MTDB quickly purchased 108 miles of existing railroad track, 32 miles of which became the first segments of the Blue and Orange lines. The new light rail system's initial segment was built with $12 million of state funds and $74 million from local sources.
The trolley system has been expanding ever since. The newest six-mile segment, the Mission Valley East LRT Extension, will provide access to major employment and activity destinations such as San Diego State University (SDSU) and the Alvarado Medical Center. The extension will also complete a northern outer loop by linking up the existing Blue and Orange lines.
Over 24,000 jobs and 10,000 residences are within walking distance of the extension's proposed stations. Current zoning is generally supportive of transit. Total capital costs for this extension are estimated at $431 million, including $330 million in Federal Transit Administration New Start Funds. Costs reflect construction of a 4,000-foot tunnel, an underground station 60 feet below the SDSU campus, and other features such as access to multiple destinations, park-and-ride lots, and road and pedestrian improvements.
The Metropolitan Transit Development Board has been promoting transit-oriented, joint-development projects from its earliest days. By 1985 MTDB was able to examine its experience with joint development and draw early conclusions, including a realization that transit-supportive development in the vicinity of light rail was not going to be a naturally occurring phenomenon, especially along existing rights-of-way.
Since MTDB did not own substantial amounts of developable land at its stations, joint ventures with adjacent land owners made sense. Success would depend on supportive public policies and an understanding of the needs of private developers who were willing to participate. Small-scale joint developments were worth pursuing because they generated revenues, provided visibility, and tended to make station areas more attractive to riders. Agreements among local governments were made easier by the fact that MTDB board members are locally elected officials from its entire service area.
To make transit more relevant to the region's population, the MTDB undertook TransitWorks, a market-based strategic planning program developed over a two-year period. Through extensive study of the attitudes and preferences that determine San Diego residents' travel choices, MTDB sought to understand individual decision making about transportation, to classify travelers into groups based on common attitudes and travel preferences, and to better understand the trade-offs travelers make when considering transit for different kinds of trips.
The TransitWorks exercise identified the service characteristics needed to attract new riders, and devised four different service concepts from short, neighborhood-level trips to trips of more than six miles. The process then developed a series of scenarios on the basis of how extensive service would have to be in order to attract different market segments. Cost estimates for each scenario were provided.
Image: San Diego Trolley stops bracket the city's Gaslamp Quarter and offer visitors travel choices.
The fourth scenario, labeled "Transit First," envisions the San Diego region finally curbing its appetite for consuming land by more careful attention to the design of new development. Trolley service has been improved and expanded, and many areas are served by a network of bus rapid transit routes fed by a web of community and neighborhood transit connections. New services have focused on key employment sites, especially where auto congestion impedes the ability of employees to get to work. In the old and new neighborhoods, especially where improved pedestrian access exists, the potential for transit use has been enhanced because a high percentage of residents are able and willing to walk to stops.
The Metropolitan Transit Development Board estimates that implementation of Transit First could cost as much as $6.8 billion and acknowledges that much depends on taxpayers' assent to an extension of TransNet, the region's half percent sales tax for transportation, which expires in 2008. The Transit First option is being supported by the coordinated actions of the City of San Diego in implementing the City of Villages transit-oriented development plan.
City of Villages is designed to accommodate and channel future growth and address critical urban public policy issues such as affordable housing, traffic congestion, aging community infrastructure, public facilities, and land use. San Diego planners and a 40-member citizens committee managed an extensive public involvement process, including 150 public meetings and various workshops that led to a growth management strategy for over 40 of San Diego's neighborhoods.
At its heart, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the plan is a civic compact between local government officials and the citizens of the neighborhoods to accept more growth in the form of housing, shops, and offices concentrated