New Creative Solutions :: Underutilized Property

In 2010, before leaving San Francisco, I made an informal pitch to members of the mayors team at the department of planning. In the project outline, I made the case that, in lieu of letting lots under city ownership remain vacant until such a time as developers would invest in them, that the city reorganize the lots into public allotments, both to beautify neighborhoods, answer an increasing city interest for which there was little infrastructure (allotment gardens), and be able to accure a degree of income from their utility (in annual fees, and pending some of the lots tossed around, actual taxable revenue from wholesale businesses started in larger plots). The plan never saw the light of day -- this was during the first round of the budget woes in California, and the seed money would never materialize, though now the city is revamping and expanding the garden allotment program through now-Mayor David Chu's offices due to increased demand and long waiting lists.

This theme was met again today when I surveyed several properties with a team just outside New York City. The city in question has 13 sites that are underutilized -- and by that they mean they own the properties, but they are no being used in any official capacity, or in capacities where they are not being used to full capability. Whether a gas station, a house, or an old armory, the city is responsible for the property, gains no taxes on them, and typically has to appeal to outside capital to fund projects, especially in this era of budget tightening and lacking access to tax revenues. These properties can range from being in fully functional, well maintained states to falling apart and in need of immediate attention, which can increase the costs of development due to hightened environmental cleanup & construction costs. 

This increased cost plan oftentimes prices out smaller community groups, which in turn leaves the cost and the eventual ownership of the space firmly in the hands of firms with the capital to invest in these places. Short of some very benevolent groups or aggressive community benefit agreements, development of these previous public spaces tend to become highly commercialized, privatized spaces for those with the income to access them (and usually located in geographies that have populations with low income access -- see Emeryville, CA). These properties oftentimes come with multi-year tax abatements, rendering them free of property taxes, on average 10-15 years, nullifying their immediate effect on the communities they occupy; in turn, the jobs created on these sites tend to be part-time, minimum wage, with a tendency for lacking in upward mobility.

The urge for cities to develop properties is a necessary one, and indeed, seeking organizations that can do so is necessary in these times of government austerity. But it's folly to think that capital intensivity is the only way; in cities across the country, we've seen examples of community organizations and others taking part-time use of derelict properties and using them for a portion of proceeds. Little City Farms and Hayes Valley Farm serve as two good examples; so too does the organization 596 Acres in Brooklyn, which doesn't preclude uses other than agriculture for the intended greening of underutilized, city-owned land. All benefit their geographies visually (by clearing blights, potential infestation sites, and beautifying) as well as economically (producing businesses or utilizing local businesses as vendors) and socially (by providing a net community benefit of green spaces and, as Hayes Valley had proven to do, help buffer property values from price drops during the the an overall decline in SF during its tenure in that space). In terms of pure tax revenue, the measures of these organizations is less than might be brought in through larger-scale commercial or real estate development; but in terms of scalability, access, and the non-fungible returns (i.e. greened spaces, expansion of public spaces, community health, removal of blight etc) the attribution of underutilized sites by community-based organizations tend to make for better returns for the city, all while empowering citizens groups to be more engaged in their neighborhoods. Benefits are retained within a community, and indeed, income from the community is reinvested into its own development, rather than being expropriated and returned to a larger commericial mothership.

Make no mistake: I believe in the power of business to improve local communities. But defining business as scalable, effective, responding to community needs, and indeed, local in its ownership and orientation are necessary remedies to the notion that commercial development writ large is of innocuous harm to local communities or economic development. Municipalities need to be creative in the ways they choose to contend with property development, as the unintended consequences of private development have had, in many cases, a seriously deleterious effect on actual communities (and indeed, even the measures used to rectify those conditions, like community benefit agreements, have a questionable return in terms of being effective). It's time for policy to be disruptive in its orientation, looking for alternate solutions, creative solutions, for dealing with the materials and resources cities do have in their toolkits, to better solve and implement concerted, comprehensive policy plans that deal in scalable, real time returns for communities and taxpayers, not simply the perception of better returns for the city as an amorphous concept. 

Community Suppported Agriculture

So this year is the first time I have ever joined a community-supported agriculture (CSA) scheme. For those unfamiliar, CSA's are basically a pay-it-forward way of farmers and consumers coming together in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Members pay for the duration of a season up front (sometimes a few months, sometimes year round; in our case, it runs approximately 20 weeks, and we started early), and in return, they get a weekly collection of fruits, vegetables, and whatever other accoutrements the farm might specialize in (some CSA's offer wool shares from sheep, others feature bread-shares and coffee shares from local bakeries and roasters). This gives the farmer the advantage of having capital up-front that can be used throughout the season for improvements and other projects; it also acts as a form of insurance, in the event of crop loss. Customers get a good end insofar as the rate for CSA's tends to run lower than the price of buying a la carte from the farmers markets, and usually they share in bounty -- if it's a particularly good year, they can obtain more product, and in bad years, sometimes less. That is the trade of the CSA -- customers are paying it forward in the hopes of supporting a farmers work. But farmers cannot control nature, and if Mother Nature chooses not to cooperate, the farmer can get hurt -- even get put out of the game by a single bad season. CSA's work to reduce that harm by giving farmers a certain degree of financial security, and the ability to install improvements that can even prevent or reduce environmental damage to crops. 

This might leave one wondering what this means for customers, as they appear to be getting the raw end of what could be a very short stick. The key to remember is that a CSA is, at its core, an investment in community and in a series of practices. When you shop at a supermarket, your income goes towards reinforcing and paying for a series of agricultural and labor practices, processing and commercial practices you might not actually agree with. Your purchases pay companies whose profit motive, largely, takes income out of your state, your local economy, and puts it back into a series of investments that may support projects you do not agree with (remember our chat last week about multiplier effects). CSA's turn that on its head, the community supporting the farmer and acknowledging that they are investing in him to do what he does best -- ostensibly the very things that the community of consumers themselves want.

Sometimes the community becomes more than just consumers, but actual co-producers; some CSA's have volunteer days and hours, optional and required, as part of the membership. Sometimes value-added activities, like making jam with overstock fruit or participating in barn-raising parties, become part of the involvement. In this case, community supported agriculture becomes about more than just procuring produce or investments, it is actually a community-generating relationship, bringing together people around shared values, convivia, and perhaps even the organizing around shared issues that all parties might not have been aware of before. All this, plus the money kept in the community by placing their money in a nearby farm, all have positive consequences on and for the community, writ-large. 

We paid $390 for ~20 weeks of produce -- about 20/week, give or take, that also includes a weekly dozen eggs, and a weekly batch of fruit (not delivered in the first drop, sadly). One pound of lettuces, some kohlrabi, a half bound of chard, a bunch of radishes, a head of lettuce, a couple heads of garlic & stalks, and a pound of garlic scapes plus eggs came in the first batch. Not a bad sell for the season. I'll be updating periodically with the stories about this adventure, as well as raising questions about it to boot. Later this month, I'll be delivering a paper on CSA's for The Association for the Study of Food and Society conference, detailing some of the demographic points and reasons people participate in them.

If any readers are members of CSA's or curious about them, we'd actually be interested in hearing about it. Drop a line in the comment box if you have been, are in, dropped out of, or are curious about CSA's. We'd look forward to hearing about it (especially cases where you dropped out of one). For those interested in checking one out near their home, check out the Local Harvest website here. It's a bit late to start a season, but it shouldn't stop you from investigating a CSA, or other options for local foods in your community. 

The La Boulange Sale: Or, an End of Multiplier Effects

La Boulange Hayes Valley, photo courtesy of Inside Scoop

News broke yesterday that SF-based bakery-chain La Boulange had sold to Starbucks for a cool $100 million. While it appears that this deal may have been in the works it still comes as something of a surprise, and a disappointing one. 

See, while I never particularly appreciated La Boulange (their baked goods are only alright, and their coffee is about the same), I did enjoy the fact that they supplied jobs and reinvested in the SF Bay Area. Their coffee came from a respectable local roaster, and they were known for supporting any number of local nonprofits, institutions, and food pantries. Most important, though, is that in keeping their profits reinvested locally, they did a boon for multiplier effects in SF, assisting real economic growth, the tax base, and the like. 

Now that's no more. With the company being directly owned by Starbucks Corp, any profits derived by the company now head into the general reinvestment of all names and brands owned by the company. While it is still uncertain, local contracts for coffee or other services may be annulled to be given to in-house vendors, hitting companies and vendors they had been using particularly hard (due to their scope in the local market). It also will hit the neighborhoods -- Noe & Hayes Valley in particular -- because suddenly theres a very national presence in the neighborhood that didn't exist before, reducing novelty and perhaps undercutting other businesses (as landlords can project the ability of other corporate clients to pay higher rents in the area). 

Perhaps most importantly, this story is the telling one of any company seeking "growth". A number of recent investments, acquisitions and buy-outs of particular small-scale/growing companies is yielding uncertainty about how dedicated they will be to any number of factors -- their customer base, their suppliers, or in the cases I'm more familiar with, their coffee farmers and quality of roasting. And having investigated and seen a number of acquisitions over time, its very easy to be skeptical; unlike Silicon Valley tech acquisitions and mergers, food & beverage acquisition, especially where the organic / local / sustainable food movement is concerned, has attempted to grow and present alternatives to the supply chain and production models of mainstay agriculture; ingredients & supply chains, unlike code and programmers, are not simply one-sided inputs. And to see La Boulange move in that direction is another strike against this type of growth*.

*A note, again: Growth takes a lot of forms, and indeed, the difficulty of monetizing effectively to reach goals for growth are very difficult, especially in the agriculture and food markets of today. That said, creative growth has worked in a number of cases, and there are still regional & national brands who managed to do so while not sacrificing the values and very material benefits they provided when they were smaller. It behooves all small businesses and people planning sustainable-ag related projects to think in business terms; we need to grow and become more accessible so that we become the mainstream/the mainstream moves to us/whatever. But to simply let go or give leeway to investors for whom profit motive is the first and primary consideration does no help for anyone, least of all the people who got you there.