Smart_Growth_America_Arden-Arcade_Technical_Assistance_Report.pdf

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Arden-Arcade Technical Assistance

Sacramento County, CA

October 18-20, 2017

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Introduction

Sacramento County is interested in exploring ways to partner with businesses and residents in the Arden-Arcade neighborhood to revitalize the area and ensure improvements in the private and public realm. As a step in this process, the County contracted with Smart Growth America (SGA) to conduct a very rapid assessment of the Arden Way corridor, focused both on specifically revitalizing Arden Way and acting as a template for revitalization of the broader Arden-Arcade area surrounding the corridor. With this information, background information provided by the County, and knowledge of successful efforts in other communities, provide the County with ideas for the revitalization of Arden Way. This memo presents the results of this work.

Process

Before proceeding to the memo’s revitalization strategies, it is worth understanding the process that created them, which proceeded as follows:

1. County staff identified a 1.7 mile stretch of Arden Way, from Watt to Howe (see Appendix A), as the study area for this work;

2. County staff provided SGA with background information and statistics on the area’s demographics, economic conditions, transportation, development and other relevant characteristics and factors;

3. During a three-day site visit, the SGA team toured the study area (the Country Club Centre and Plaza area and the superblock between Arden Way, Fair Oaks Boulevard, Watt Avenue, and Howe Avenue) and surroundings and interviewed a number of stakeholders identified by the County; and

4. Following the site visit, SGA prepared this follow up memo.

As anyone familiar with this type of work will see, this was a rapid and high level process, intentionally so. It was designed from the start to be an effort that was efficient with the County’s resources but sufficient to provide the SGA team with a broad familiarity with the corridor-- allowing SGA to brainstorm possible ideas and directions for revitalization for the County’s consideration and potential future study.

Goals

Revitalizing the corridor is not an end in itself. Discussions with the County and the corridor stakeholders identified a number of challenges that exist on Arden Way and in the surrounding neighborhoods, as well as concerns and aspirations that stakeholders have for the future of the corridor. These include (in no particular order):

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• Dissatisfaction with the visual appeal of the corridor and the lack of a cohesive aesthetic or appearance;

• A desire to maintain the corridor as a functional and functioning travel corridor for the auto traffic it currently serves;

• Concern about a future recurrence of a downturn in the housing market and property values surrounding the corridor;

• A desire to be an affordable and attractive option for young and newly formed households in the region;

• Concern about presence and growth of the homeless population along the corridor;

• Awareness of the major changes happening in the retail sector and a desire to manage its impact on the corridor;

• A need to maintain the County’s fiscal health and an awareness of the role that retail plays in that equation;

• A desire to increase the walkability, bikability and transportation choices on the corridor and in surrounding neighborhoods;

• A desire to create a better community identity, and establish a community gathering place(s) or center(s);

• A need to protect neighborhoods from undesirable aspects of some of the uses on the corridor (traffic, commercial loading areas, blight); and

• The overall goal of creating an attractive, economically-competitive, convenient and accessible corridor and neighborhoods that provide a high quality of life for the variety of residents that currently reside there and could reside there in the future.

The SGA team adopted these points as its charge—to suggest revitalization strategies and ideas that address the challenges identified and to achieve the County’s and community’s goals for the corridor.

Developing a Strategy

A number of factors informed SGA’s development of a strategy. Some of the more important and influential are discussed here. Among SGA’s first considerations is the scope of the community’s and the County’s ambitions. To achieve the goals set out above will require major actions.

Small steps like building façade improvements, banners, branding initiatives, or efforts to bring better order to corridor signage are unlikely to achieve the desired outcomes.

Retail, office and residential trends are challenging for the corridor. In retail the move to online retailing, the oversupply of retail space, and overall trends favoring more walkable retail locations put Arden-Arcade at risk. Local leasing trends portray a sector that is just holding its own now. Similar trends favoring walkable, downtown locations in the commercial and residential markets present future hazards as well. The recent

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 4 economic downturn exposed residential market weakness in Arden-Arcade. This is compounded by the assessments of local realtors who suggest that improving many of the small houses in neighborhoods along the corridor simply doesn’t pay. In the face of these trends, small steps are unlikely to achieve big goals.

SGA suggests instead that the County consider a bold move that takes advantage of many of the neighborhood’s attributes and capitalizes on existing market forces:

Transform Arden Way from a drive-only commercial strip to a walkable suburban community with mixed use town centers that can be afforded by the full range of the market.

SGA believes this is a strategy that can work for Arden-Arcade for several reasons:

• Arden-Arcade currently supports all of the components of walkable places— office, abundant retail, housing of various types, as well as schools, post offices, parks, and the other elements of a complete community. This strategy doesn’t seek to introduce wholly new uses, just to arrange them differently.

• The neighborhood is very close to downtown Sacramento and is considerably less costly. People being priced out of downtown could get many of the amenities they’d like in downtown at lower price points and easily reach downtown itself.

• Arden Way is a known location in the region that many people travel through and is centrally located (which is why it has been a successful retail strip). But many don’t stop and cannot name businesses on the corridor. Creating a distinct center or centers can make Arden Way a destination rather than a pass-through.

• The Sacramento region has relatively few walkable places. Specifically, according to SGA’s report Foot Traffic Ahead 2016, Sacramento ranks 23rd for walkable regional centers in the list of the 30 largest metro areas in the US. It has 6 regionally significant walkable centers, or 1 for every 388,000 people.

Compared to places like Denver and Charlotte with roughly 1 walkable center for every 165,000 people, Sacramento is undersupplied. As such, Arden Way would become a scarce (and currently sought after) walkable product in the market rather than one of many, many suburbs in the market (and an older one at that).

• It leverages the fact that there are many small lot, single family homes (and thus higher density) in the corridor, which may be a disadvantage if the corridor tries to compete against other more modern suburbs. If these relatively dense residential areas are well-connected to new walkable centers it can add value to this housing and change the economics of reinvestment in this stock.

• The alternative strategy—trying to draw reinvestment into Arden-Arcade to make it a newer, more aesthetically pleasing version of what it already is— seems unlikely to be successful given the competing suburban product

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 5 alternatives and the overall trends toward walkability. Making Arden-Arcade a better version of its current incarnation is unlikely to accomplish all of the goals identified by the County and stakeholders.

Implementing the Strategy

Based on experience in other communities that have gone through similar transitions, SGA recommends that the County pursue the following course of action to transform the corridor from an auto-oriented strip into an urban boulevard with distinct town centers located along the boulevard:

1. Create a catalytic project.

2. Transform Arden Way into a walkable, multimodal boulevard.

3. Establish Place Management.

4. Make investments in surrounding neighborhoods.

5. Plan for success: Develop a comprehensive housing strategy for the area.

1. Create a catalytic project.

Transformations in many communities have started with a catalytic project. It generally performs three important functions. First, it physically shows a new type of development pattern that people had a hard time understanding or visualizing before— in this case a walkable center along Arden Way or a similarly located site in the nearby area. Second, it proves the market where no truly local examples existed before—a viable market for new housing types, office types, and retail types that currently don’t exist in Arden-Arcade. Third, it serves as a starting point, a seed crystal, from which adjacent similar development can grow and continue.

Creating a walkable center requires a certain scale to be successful. A single walkable building or a block of such buildings dropped into the Arden Way strip context will fail.

A critical mass is needed. To achieve this, ideally, the project should cover an area of approximately 20-30 acres. In addition, it should:

• Be designed with a clear center and edges;

• Achieve high development densities;

• Have significant frontage on Arden Way and be mixed-use, including residential, retail, and office components;

• Take advantage of public facilities that draw people, such as a library, a public theater, or community center;

• Provide public gathering spaces like a town square, a village green, or a dog park and include spaces that can be programmed for community gatherings like festivals, “screen on the green”, farmers markets, and concerts;

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• Have good urban design focused on creating great experiences for pedestrians—designing space that can work well for 8 and 80 year-olds usually provides a good experience for everyone; and

• Provide good pedestrian connectivity to surrounding residential neighborhoods and a good, easy, safe, predictable, direct transit connection to downtown.

A project like the one described above will not happen in Arden-Arcade without leadership. It will only come about as a collaborative effort with interested property owners, retail business operators, neighboring residents, and any institutional stakeholders and government agencies. That effort must ultimately be focused on a specific site that is feasible for a catalytic project, and for which there are willing property owners. Sites which may be otherwise appropriate, but whose property owners are not interested, should be excluded from consideration. The County will need to lead this process, taking the following steps to initiate and facilitate its eventual development.

During its work on the corridor, the SGA team identified several potential sites that could accommodate a catalytic development including, but not limited to:

• The 10.74 acre Kaiser Permanente site with the neighboring 7.42 acre site at 3102 Arden Way and the public school space behind these two properties;

• The Country Club Centre and Plaza, including the Sam’s Club and Walmart sites;

• The northwest corner of Arden Way and Watt; and

• The high school on Bell Street south of Arden Way.

See Appendix B for potential site locations.

These sites were identified because they provide sufficient acreage to achieve the scale required for a catalytic project to succeed, they have frontage on prominent roads, the parcels have a single or relatively few number of owners (making assembly easier), and the shapes of the parcels provide sufficient depth and breadth to create coherent centers within easy walk of all the surrounding development.

To transform one of these sites with a catalytic project (or another site not yet identified) SGA suggests the following steps:

The County should do a market and economic feasibility study to determine: What development demand exists and what development program(s) can look like (e.g., the different mixes of office, residential, and retail that can work); and the economics the developer will face with different development programs (e.g., how much revenue can be expected from different development programs). Note: This will require skill on the part of the firm doing the study because projections must be made for product that currently does not exist on the corridor.

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The County should conduct outreach to property owners on the corridor, particularly the owners of the parcels that could be catalytic projects, to assess the owners’ interest in pursuing a project and to demonstrate the County’s interest in partnering to create a catalytic project. The goal of the outreach is to show the property owners the potential their property holds, indicate the County’s eventual willingness to participate in the creation of a walkable urban project, and create some competition among sites for the opportunity the County is offering. Where owners are interested, a community planning process should be initiated to develop a plan and entitle a property that can be put out as an RFP for developers. Where owners are not interested, move on.

It is worth noting that to be effective the area plan must include the entitlements needed to build. Typically, in these types of cases a difficult “chicken and egg” situation develops. The area plan can’t be overly detailed or else the developer has no room to adjust to site and market conditions. The public sector and community on the other hand typically want a great deal of detail before approving the developer’s zoning.

Without entitlements however the developer is unwilling to spend the significant money needed to create detailed site plans when there is the possibility that the city and community won’t approve anything. In strong markets, developers are sometimes willing to take this risk but the Arden-Arcade market does not currently enjoy this type of strength, particularly for such a new product type (for the corridor).

For such projects, a sketch zoning process may be a solution to this problem. Sketch zoning is essentially a preliminary zoning approval that provides some overall parameters for the site, approving for instance a certain number or range of single family and multifamily residential units, an FAR (floor area ratio) for office, a number of square feet of retail, or the provision of an area of park space. This approach guarantees the developer the ability to build a certain amount of product but leaves important questions to be resolved and approved by the County at a later stage, such as specifics of building placement, massing, and public space design.

The advantage of this approach is that the developer gets assurance that a development will happen and this justifies spending money on precise development mix, site planning, design, and engineering. This work will reveal site and market constraints and determine the range of potential design options. It is only once this has happened that a meaningful discussion of site design options can take place between the developer, community, and County. Another advantage that this provides is that it puts this type of development on a more competitive footing with other existing by-right development options. The disadvantage is that the County does commit itself to some type of development without knowing the precise design—though the County must still approve the ultimate design.

Beyond initial entitlement there will be a number of other steps the County should be prepared to contemplate to make a catalytic project happen. Throughout the

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 8 development, the County can take steps to rationalize the approvals process. It can coordinate administrative review across agencies or departments, so that applicants are not forced to go through multiple processes in seriatim but can have concurrent review. It can reduce fees for applicants. It can create a “one-stop shop,” or single “window” for applications. A related approach is the creation of an “ombudsman” within local government (typically in an economic development agency) who will counsel applicants through the process.

The County will also need to be ready to participate in the project as a financial partner because with the current market, there is a good chance that the best catalytic project (that includes the public spaces, urban design, and other key elements) won’t pencil for the developer. In that case, the County must be prepared to help the developer find means to fill the gap between the costs and the revenues. Indeed, one of the goals of the project is to change the Arden-Arcade market so this type of development does work economically in the future.

County participation can take different forms. Investments in public infrastructure— roads, streetscapes, parks, and public or shared parking facilities can be important contributions that can make a development work. More direct participation can include financing mechanisms, tax abatements and other tools.

Needless to say, financial incentives should be focused on the area to be redeveloped, with only projects that conform to the plan goals and specifications being eligible. It is possible to accomplish this through a comprehensive plan overlay—that is, providing administrative, procedural, or financial benefits to development within a designated target area. This can be a way of explicitly determining which proposals are eligible for a package of benefits, from expedited approval to tax abatement, and which are not.

An advantage of this approach is the removal of these items as the subject of lobbying or political pressure, while increasing transparency.

The rationale for the County’s participation is the public benefits a catalytic project will provide and its ability to leverage future similar investments. Other jurisdictions that have successfully pursued this strategy have understood that because the market isn’t established, the first project is generally the hardest and it establishes the market.

Therefore, subsequent projects rarely receive the same level of financial participation.

2. Transform Arden Way into a walkable, multimodal boulevard.

A catalytic project and subsequent development projects will be greatly supported if they are pursued in the context of a broader vision for Arden-Arcade—a vision that is supportive of and provides a framework for new walkable development projects.

Therefore, the County should clearly articulate and pursue the goal of transforming Arden Way into a walkable, multimodal boulevard.

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A great boulevard has: Safe and accessible design for people of all ages and abilities;

facilities for walking, biking, and riding transit; wide sidewalks with a tree-lined buffer between traffic and pedestrians; parking and/or protected bike lanes on the shoulder to provide a large buffer; grassy medians; frequent and safe crosswalks; curb extensions;

narrowed travel lanes; and comfortable and accessible transit stops. It is often not practical to add all of these features at once, so a phased approach is best. The near-term goal should be to establish a minimum section, say, four blocks in sequence.

Logically, this would start with the development of the catalytic project, and progress from there. There may have to be exceptions to the segmented phasing of improvements, if for instance, utility changes are required that need to occur along the whole corridor at once. The successful implementation of several walkable blocks is the kernel from which a corridor-long improvement can grow.

Complete streets For this transformation to begin, a coherent vision for the street space needs to be articulated. This applies to Arden Way itself, as the spine connecting the set of neighborhoods that surround it, and to secondary streets that connect the neighborhoods to it. This vision should define the multimodal allocation of space from building face to building face, encompassing sidewalk, space for street furniture, trees and other plantings, on-street-parking, and running way for bicycles, cars, transit, and other vehicles. The precise allocation may vary, and will clearly be different on the principal boulevard (Arden Way) than on secondary streets. The street plan should also aim to improve connectivity, filling in missing pieces of street grid where possible. This should include safe bike connectivity not just on Arden Way but throughout the surrounding neighborhood so residents can bike to the town center without having to ride on a high-speed street.

As noted above, the first step moving towards the transformation of the corridor is likely a catalytic development project of a scale significant enough to influence several initial blocks on the corridor. A precursor to getting such a catalytic project to happen is to articulate the bigger vision for the corridor so that partners in the project know their efforts are part of this vision and will be bolstered over time by other moves that create value for their efforts. Thus, for phasing purposes, the overall vision and catalytic project need to move forward in parallel. Similarly, supporting infrastructure investments should be timed and prioritized to provide maximum support to the early movers. Therefore, the first portion of Arden Way to receive a new median, sidewalks, and bike lanes should be the areas that will best support a significant, adjacent catalytic project.

Subsequent actions will consist of 1) land-use and development changes on specific parcels on the corridor; 2) changes to the roadway and right-of-way; and 3) repositioning, replacing, and upgrading utilities. With respect to land-use change, Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 10 additional large-scale projects will likely take place only where lots have sufficient depth and can be assembled to create necessary scale. The County can support these efforts in similar fashion as the first catalytic project, though not necessarily with the same level of support. If the first project is truly “catalytic,” subsequent development should occur without requiring as much boosting by government. For the parcels along the corridor that are not suited for this type of development, encourage incremental transitions by increasing development options in the zoning and implementing specific design guidelines that activate with redevelopment. Indeed, these smaller parcels may be the key to implementing goals for the corridor along its length. Changes to the right-of-way can be incremental along the corridor and take advantage of places where adjacent development is likely and where conflicts with a new street treatment are minimal.

Utilities pose a different challenge. There are significant efficiencies to be gained by executing changes to utilities at the same time and conversely an incremental approach can bring significant costs.

Transit An important component of a vibrant, multimodal, mixed-use corridor is public transportation. Part of Arden-Arcade’s potential stems from its proximity to a resurgent downtown Sacramento, especially as housing costs rise in town. Many who want daily access to the downtown (for work or entertainment) will increasingly find housing costs an obstacle, and Arden Way is already showing signs that it is an alternative. However, many in this population (notably, Millennials) want to have frequent, reliable transit available to them. Arden Way lies in a large “wedge” between light rail lines, so that it is not well-served by the system. The situation of the corridor suggests that improved bus service could be very attractive for commuters and those traveling for entertainment to the downtown. It would also provide a good “circulator” service for the corridor itself. A mid-term priority should be the establishment of a frequent, attractive service along Arden Way to downtown. A well-branded, high-frequency (at least during rush hour) circulator with limited stops may be a good option.

Building envelope Improvements to the right-of-way and transportation are only half the job of creating a walkable, high-value boulevard. The other half concerns the development of all the adjoining space on the (mostly private) parcels along the street, and the resulting “street wall” that creates livable space. Thus, it is essential to develop design guidelines for redeveloped properties along Arden Way. Buildings must generally be located along the back of sidewalks, without any parking or driveways between the sidewalk and building frontage, to create a walkable environment. The County should determine the appropriate building heights for the corridor, but main streets generally function best with more than one story. Connectivity with parallel streets is important to provide for good circulation of both vehicles and pedestrians. This requires careful placement of

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 11 curb cuts, loading facilities, and block lengths set to a pedestrian-supportive scale. New gridded streets should have a block size of about 300 feet to encourage walking. The ideal block size is between 200 and 400 feet but never more than 600 feet. Consider how alleyways or secondary streets may over time connect to future traffic growth.

To both facilitate new development and guide it to create the right building envelope, the County may wish to consider if a form-based code is right for Arden-Arcade. Form-based code (FBC) is an alternative to the conventional zoning most localities adopted in the mid-20th century. It is intended to regulate development so as to achieve a desired form of the built environment, one that emphasizes walkability and the creation of appealing public spaces, in a mixed-use setting. This contrasts with conventional zoning, which emphasizes the separation of uses, and was developed largely to accommodate an automobile-centric development pattern.

One of the advantages of FBC is to simplify the project approval process. Because the characteristics of acceptable and desirable development are established by the community beforehand, application review can become somewhat routine, or at least simplified. Protracted negotiations among applicant, government, and community members can be avoided. This has benefits both for developers (concerned about the uncertainties of the entitlement process, and the associated costs that may be incurred) and for neighbors (concerned about the nature of the development that may occur next to them, and the impact on the neighborhood).

The potential benefits over time, in achieving a community’s goals for development, does require significant “upfront” investment in a planning effort, including the time of municipal staff and citizens.

Parking Finally, the transformation of Arden-Arcade cannot be accomplished without careful attention to parking. Over time, the amount of surface area devoted to parking needs to be reduced. More development implies more residents and activity, and they won’t all use transit or bicycles, so cars must be accommodated. This implies the need for a gradual transition from surface parking to structured and on-street parking. Right-sizing parking for the entire sector will require a comprehensive parking strategy, and may call for a municipal parking approach. Ensuring sufficient parking, while not overbuilding expensive facilities is more likely with the use of shared parking tactics to the extent possible. The great challenge is to find the “Goldilocks” quantity of parking— not too much, not too little, but just right.

3. Establish place management.

“Place making” is not only about physical changes to the built environment; it is about quotidian activities like sanitation, marketing, relationship building, and so on. As

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 12 distinct places, walkable centers have functional needs; they need to be clean and safe.

They require “branding.” They want programming and on-street activity. To handle these day-to-day management activities, and to foster partnership across government, business, landowners, and citizens it may be worthwhile to consider whether a new partnership institution should be established. A “Place Management” entity tends to the day-to-day operational needs of a sector, provides a focus for efforts for revitalization, and facilitates on-going engagement among all stakeholders. It ensures that there is always a custodian concerned about the well-being and continual success of the place, seven days a week, 12 months a year.

It must be stressed that, as used here, place management refers not to a specific location or property, but to a broader geographic sector—from a few blocks to a multi-neighborhood area—and that it is about the management of public spaces within that area (streets and sidewalks, public squares, etc.) not private property. Thus, while it is analogous to the kind of management exercised within a shopping mall, it is distinct from those mechanisms and activities. Effectively, this is a (limited) governance function for the public space of a limited geographic area. How it is affected varies, sometimes through direct agencies of local government, frequently through limited delegation to public-private entities. The most well-known example is a business improvement district (or BID), which is usually a quasi-governmental agency, typically initiated and led by local property owners. BIDs often have access to dedicated revenue sources, which may be derived from local taxes, such as a property tax add-on (approved by property owners within the district). There are now well over 1,000 BIDs across the country.

There is a range of organizational place management types are found in communities around the US. Some are small downtown revitalization organizations run as non-profits (typically with some kind of joint sponsorship by government and the business community). Some are agencies of local government itself.

For example, Montgomery County, Maryland a suburban jurisdiction outside Washington, DC, maintains three “Urban Districts”, serving specific commercial areas within the county.1 One of these is the Silver Spring Urban and Arts and Entertainment District, whose mission is to provide “ . . . enhanced services to the Central Business District to ensure that downtown Silver Spring is maintained as a clean, safe and attractive environment to promote a vibrant social and business climate to support long-term economic viability and vitality. SSUD services include ambassadorship, security, streetscape maintenance, walkway repairs, tree maintenance, marketing, promotions and special events. The Silver Spring Urban District sponsors a summer concert series, the Silver Spring Jazz Festival, the Montgomery County Thanksgiving

1http://apps.montgomerycountymd.gov/BASISOPERATING/Common/Department.

aspx?ID=16V10 http://apps.montgomerycountymd.gov/BASISOPERATING/Common/Department.aspx?ID=16V10 http://apps.montgomerycountymd.gov/BASISOPERATING/Common/Department.aspx?ID=16V10

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Parade, and other events to attract people to downtown Silver Spring.”2 The director and staff are employees of county government. It has a total budget of about $3.5 million and a staff of 35.

On the other hand, the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization (CPRO) in northern Virginia’s Arlington County is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public-private partnership, which serves a 3½-mile corridor. Governed by a board that includes property owners, businesses, neighborhood associations, and county representatives, it has operated with total staff of about 2-3 positions and a budget of about $300,000, supported by about $200,000 from the County, and the balance from memberships and event revenues. CPRO coordinates major events (like an annual Blues Festival which draws attendees from across the metropolitan area), maintains banners (decorative and informational) that are hung from street lamps and over the street, and operates two weekly farmer’s markets. It serves as a convening venue for the Columbia Pike community, as well as providing marketing and branding for the corridor.

Any of these approaches can work; the important thing is that some entity and some dedicated staff are assigned the responsibility for day-to-day place management. The key functions for such an entity can be summarized as:

• Manage the day-to-day needs of the neighborhood, from trash pickup and street cleaning to graffiti removal and changing streetlights. Although the place management entity may not be directly responsible for carrying out these tasks (though, in some cases they are), it can play a key role in seeing that these issues are tended to expeditiously. Coping with the problems associated with homelessness is also a function BIDS and other place management entities often perform.

• Market downtown to potential investors, both from within the region and from outside of it, and create a culture of hospitality for both companies and new residents. One of the first and most important tasks associated with the establishment of a BID (or other place management entity) should be creating a brand identity for the Arden Way corridor. This can tie in with marketing efforts for local businesses, recruitment of new businesses, and promotion of development opportunities.

• Program public spaces to bring residents to the neighborhood throughout the day, week, month, and year. A key function of place management is to make good use of events to create excitement and draw people—both nearby residents and visitors from farther afield—such as festivals, markets, outdoor movies, music and other live performances, sporting events and competitions.

Coordination and promotion is important; having a regular schedule of events throughout the year can result in visits becoming a regular habit, offering a

2 https://www.silverspringdowntown.com/go/silver-spring-urban-district https://www.silverspringdowntown.com/go/silver-spring-urban-district

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 14 reliable stimulus for both private business and public revenues, and positive marketing for the community.

• Pursue and promote redevelopment opportunities. Work with business owners, developers, and interested companies to help mixed use, walkable centers continue to grow.

• Regularly convene key stakeholders. Bring together landowners, business owners, and developers at regular intervals to discuss needs, address problems, and strategize for future growth. Consider inviting business development staff from other towns, the County, or the state, and aim to think expansively about how downtown can become even better—now and in the future.

• Assess performance. Keep track of how the neighborhood does over time. Are there vacancies and business closings, or new tenants and new construction?

The steward should compile data that measures the outcomes, progress, and goals of downtown over a short-term, mid-term, and long-term basis, and work continuously to improve that performance.

4. Make investments in surrounding neighborhoods.

Nationwide, the trend toward walkable commercial centers and walkable neighborhoods is clear. In places where walkable neighborhoods have received reinvestment or where formerly unwalkable centers have been made walkable, the effects on property values and vitality have been clear and in some cases remarkable. In that process, effects on surrounding neighborhoods have also been observed.

Neighborhoods that had stagnated, when nearby or connected to newly reinvigorated walkable centers, have also seen their values increase and as a result they have seen subsequent increases in investment in the residential housing stock.

Currently, according to interviews with stakeholders in Arden-Arcade, reinvesting in much of the housing stock surrounding the corridor doesn’t make economic sense. One of the County’s goals is to change this dynamic and the accomplishment of this goal is one of the reasons that SGA is recommending that Arden Way be transformed into a walkable urban corridor. However, improvements in these neighborhoods need not wait on Arden Way’s transformation, and if deployed strategically can reinforce and improve the likelihood of broader success on the corridor.

Touring the neighborhoods makes it clear that the neighborhoods of large lot, high income properties are less in need of community facility improvements and that larger returns will come from investments in the neighborhoods with smaller housing stock on small lots.

Investments in the existing public spaces and amenities like dog parks, sidewalks, bicycle lanes and trails, pocket parks, the public pool and playgrounds can make a

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 15 difference in a community’s future, particularly if it’s clear that these are smaller, first steps in an overall plan. This last point is critical. There tends to be skepticism that plans will actually be implemented, but if small investments are seen as the first step in an overall plan, they can be a sign that the plan is real and is already starting to be implemented. This creates an expectation that more and bigger implementation will follow and can spur private investment. The best way to demonstrate the connection is literally to improve connections from the neighborhoods to the site of the catalytic project. Introduce branding initiatives for the neighborhood that start to build the brand of a transformed corridor.

Without the context of the bigger plan, small investments can be seen as weak, ineffectual attempts to stem an overwhelming tide with investments that are clearly insufficient for the task at hand. This can actually create a lack of confidence, a belief that there is not a clear understanding of the challenges and that as a result solutions are not forthcoming.

5. Plan for success: Develop a comprehensive housing strategy for the area.

A current advantage of the Arden Way corridor and surrounding areas is its relative housing affordability. Neighborhoods throughout the sector are home to residents of greatly varying income levels. Today, it might not seem that affordable housing is a major concern in this corridor; however, the very real potential for success brings with it a very real potential for displacement down the road, and the possible loss of part of the community that has called Arden Way home for many years. Addressing those needs once success has been achieved, and real estate values have risen significantly, can be more difficult than planning for them ahead of time. Thus, It is important to plan early on, so that a variety of housing can be maintained that will meet the needs of the corridor as it is built out and ultimately achieves its goals. A housing plan should address what the supply of housing should encompass, such as how much is needed of:

Rental versus owner-occupied, large unit versus small, single-family versus multi-family, market-rate versus committed affordable, etc. Setting goals now, and identifying mechanisms for achieving them, is key to attaining long-term balance.

Furthermore, increasing land value does not have to be seen as necessitating a loss of affordable housing. To anticipate a rise in the value of real estate is to recognize the opportunity to leverage some of the increased value for the purpose of supporting affordable housing.

Maintaining Arden-Arcade as a mixed-income community, with a housing inventory that can support the needs of many different kinds of households, is a policy objective that reflects the values expressed by residents and officials, as well as being important for addressing the local economy’s workforce needs, and to help the County meet state

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 16 requirements. On the latter, we note that the County’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation calls for an addition of almost 12,000 units by 2021, including some 5,000 for low- and very-low income households (those with income below 80 percent of area median income). While those targets are county-wide, the creation of new housing in the Arden Way corridor clearly offers an opportunity to make progress across the board, with new units in all income categories. Doing so would provide benefits to the corridor in multiple ways; notably, providing more demand for local retail to fill the ground floors of existing and new buildings, generating more foot traffic and pedestrian activity overall, and more riders for transit, and adding diversity to the workforce that employers can draw upon.

A housing plan should begin with some basic research, to include several elements:

• A housing needs assessment.

• An inventory of the existing housing stock (single- and multi-family, ownership and rental), with associated rents or sales prices.

• An estimate of the potential loss of housing affordability with a range of reasonably anticipated land value increases.

On the basis of the above, goals and targets can be established, and a strategic plan developed to attain them, utilizing a range of housing tools. Those tools can include standard methods already in use (low-income tax credits, housing bonds, local housing trust funds, etc.), but they can be supplemented by measures incorporated in the corridor plan, specifically oriented to returning some of the value generated by improvements to the corridor to its neighborhoods.

Conclusion

The County asked SGA to come to Sacramento for two and half days to do a very rapid assessment of the western Arden-Arcade community, with a focus on the Arden Way corrdor, and provide the County with ideas for the corridor’s future. The information and context that can be gained in that time frame are obviously limited and so it is worth recalling the scope of this engagement as one considers the ideas and options presented. It was always meant as an initial “brainstorming” that would provide the County with recommendations and directions that could be discarded, built upon or adapted as desired and appropriate.

SGA has worked in many communities and on corridors around the country. From this perspective, the opportunities for Sacramento County in the Arden-Arcade area, including along the Arden Way corridor, are exciting. The corridor’s current economic health is not bad, it is regionally central and trafficked, it has excellent proximity to downtown, it has a number of sites where catalytic projects are possible, and the County has control of and decision-making authority over the right-of-way. These

Smart Growth America | 8/21/2018 | Page 17 factors give the County the opportunity to respond to market trends productively and reposition the corridor for the future economy. Many places do not have these fundamental factors that provide a pathway to reposition.

However, change will require leadership and proactivity on the part of the County. The dominant context on the corridor—auto-oriented strip commercial—means that a transition driven entirely by the market is unlikely. The County must help to seed that change by:

• Sending a clear signal to land owners, developers, citizens and others that the future will be different;

• Supporting a catalytic project to be a beachhead for the new development the County wants in the corridor;

• Making changes to Arden Way itself, as well as providing better connectivity to the surrounding streets;

• Investing in the public amenities in the neighborhoods surrounding Arden Way;

• Creating the institutional capacity to manage Arden Way as a place with specific programming and operational functions; and

• Planning for success so that Arden-Arcade retains one of its current advantages, its ability to attract and serve the full range of incomes in the market.

The actions proposed here are not minor, and success will only come with sustained effort over time. However, SGA was asked to view the corridor from the point of view of accomplishing specific goals: Protect against decline, position for the new economy, and achieve the goals that the County and corridor stakeholders articulated. We believe these goals require a significant rather than a small effort.

It is also worth noting that we believe if the County chooses this direction, doing things halfway will not work. A catalytic project that only meets 50 or 75 percent of the requirements will fail. If it’s too small in scale it will fail. If it is a hybrid between walkable urban and suburban strip it will fail. If it’s not matched by changes in street infrastructure or connections to downtown it will fail. The success or failure of the early efforts will be used to determine the viability of this strategy in Arden-Arcade for years to come. To follow this strategy requires a commitment to seeing it done right and with high quality. Places that have done so have seen that the rewards of success can be significant.

Sacramento County has an opportunity in Arden-Arcade to improve the neighborhood’s long term economic prospects and improve its fiscal performance. It can be made more walkable and easier to use as the population ages. It can help families build wealth and bring new job opportunities. And it can put a “there, there,” creating a sense of community and improving quality of life. These outcomes are certainly not guaranteed. Change includes risk, but so does staying the same.

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Source: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, USGS, AeroGRID, IGN, and the GIS User Community

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Attachment 1a - Corridor Maps

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Source: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, USGS, AeroGRID, IGN, and the GIS User Community

Legend Zoning

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Arden Way Zoning Overview

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*AC is an Interim Zoning category that is being phased out and replaced with LC designations.

Attachment 1a - Corridor Maps