Gov. Deval Patrick is going to give away $200 million to developers this year, much of it for shopping malls and parking lots. The apparent motive is to please the construction unions. The cover is that it will not only “create jobs” but “spur $1 billion in private investment.” Neither claim is supported. When Patrick first ran for governor, he said that a business relying on public subsidies is on its way out of business. And the notion that it will spur private investment is thrown in merely as a political announcement by development czar Greg Bialecki. Indeed, economists are quoted saying that this strategy ignores the real problem: the jobs in financial and other sectors are gone; and that’s because the demand for their services is gone. You can build, but they will not come.
Instead of using all that money for long-term investments in structural and intellectual infrastructure, the gov lets the transit system and the education system crumble, dumps park responsibility on private donors, and generally follows the Republican playbook: corporate welfare will lift all boats. Or at least he will claim credit for any boat-lifting that does happen for other reasons.
I’m surprised that this didn’t appear on BMG, since it reveals his betrayal of public services. This $200 million is only part of his corporate give-away, but is especially infuriating coming so soon after he gave Liberty Mutual $22.5 million (thus ratifying a City of Boston give-away to LM of $16 million), for absolutely no reason (LM is not leaving, it’s not going to hire more, it is not in a “blighted area,” and can afford to build its (unlawful) tower from the household checking account).
I think if a Republican governor did this, progressives would be protesting…no?
Shirley makes some good points (as usual) here. Surely there are ways to use this money to create jobs by repairing and restoring our public transportation system for instance.
As Dan Grabaukas suggests in this article “Before we can answer the call for expansion, we need to fix what’s falling down”.
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p>Hey maybe Bob Kraft needs some money. Oops, tried that!
if the state invests $200M and $1B gets built, the fivefold multiplier in jobs is a good thing. It’s also a big if.
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p>I wonder: why not take the $200M and invest it in mass transit, so that people can get to the currently empty buildings which already exist? Instead of building parking lots in the outer suburbs, build better mass transit to the urban cores to/from suburban commuting centers.
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p>There are lots of reasons why companies aren’t locating in downtown areas… one of them is the time&cost employees bear getting to/from the downtown center. If you improve mass transit, you reduce the time and the cost, for both those who take mass transit and those who still drive (reduced demand for roads means a faster commute and cheaper parking).
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p>This plan is far from perfect: it takes much longer to build mass transit — projects necessarily more more slowly than building parking garages, which don’t require anywhere near the public process (or engineering processes). Furthermore, unless the Feds are throwing in at a high enough rate, there’s no local multiplier. Still, it’s frustrating to hear Governor Patrick talk about smart growth and then build parking garages in Natick.
The reason business have relocated out of major cities is the cost. Even the hospitals have created satellite campuses. Making public transit easier isn’t going to make any difference. Frankly I think most growth in commuting is suburb to suburb.
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p>The crony capitalism part of this is also unpleasant. If you hire the correct law firm or make the correct political contribution – you get your parking garage subsidized. Businesses find they get better return on their investment by lobbying them producing a better widget.
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Where are these places that have a demand for more retail space? Braintree, Kingston, Taunton, Wareham, Plymouth — all are haunted by empty space right now.
Those who own empty commercial real estate develop it because that’s their exit strategy — nearby empty space has relatively little influence. The owner of an empty commercially-zoned parcel pays the same real estate taxes every year on the value of that property, whatever the local vacancy rate is. Commercially-zoned property, especially in suburbia, typically won’t support residential development. A lot has to do with local zoning — retail zoning is often different from office/industrial/light industrial. In a down market, it’s easier and faster to sell new construction than to sell an existing empty building.
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p>Retail malls are empty (or full) because of local consumer choices. Malls get built (or not) because of local business choices. The two are very nearly independent.
(I always think of Chris Rock’s routines about malls on this.) However, the failed predictions of the commercial real estate marker — itself teetering on the edge — shouldn’t be underwritten by our governor with our money.
There should not be new construction before maintaining current infrastructure, certainly not subsidies to private corporations before maintaining public infrastructure.
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p>The “third world condemned” parking structure at UMASS Boston is a shameful blot on this state, just as one example.
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p>Who will graduate before UMASS falls down
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p>Remember this post
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p>WHY aren’t we investing in public higher education in preference to instant, superflous mall space?
…as a “Democrat” if you hadn’t advocated for passing Measure 1 a couple years back.
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p>Yes, we get that you think that as an owner of a million dollar home you think you pay too much property taxes, and you think the government is just out to waste your money, so taxes should just be eliminated, along with services, and most government entities. Knowing where you come from on this topic puts posts like this in real context.
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p>History has shown that the best way out of a recession is for government spending on programs that employ people. Thus the stimulus funds. In this case, these are projects which will actually employ workers. I don’t really understand how you can say the claim isn’t supported. Stimulus money is being spent on billions of dollars of projects in this state designed to employ workers already. At least 30,000 workers have received a paycheck helped by stimulus money.
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p>My reading of the article is that by targeting smaller projects across the state, nobody “gets away with” a multimillion dollar tax credit (like the Liberty Mutual credit you cite), but communities across the state get the advantage of a small amount of state aid for projects that will improve infrastructure, and allow for communities to recover quicker once the economy starts to rebound. Doesn’t seem to be a big corporate giveaway at all, in fact.
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p>We also get added benefit of saving money on unemployment benefits, reducing the cost on subsidized health care for unemployed and underemployed workers, and adding revenue through income taxes. So the $200 million could easily be cut in half through other savings in the short term.
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p>You also have determined that this is just a giveaway to unions, as if real people with a real need for a job aren’t the ones actually benefiting. Yes, it would be nice if we could all live in our nice homes and spend all day as a rabble rouser, but that’s not the reality for most people.
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p>Is it possible that there’s a better way to spark employment in the short term while we recover from Bush’s global economic meltdown? Maybe. But you’re not advocating for that. If you have specific ideas on how a governor might spend money to help us out of this recession, creating immediate jobs, and providing the potential for long-term benefit, I’d like to hear it.
We don’t need new homes, stores, and offices. Our state is already flooded with vacancies.
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p>We need better roads, mass transit improvements, & school improvements. What about this idea: take the $200 million (and the tax credit going to Liberty Mutual) and provide grants to as many schools as possible to cover the cost of installing solar panels on their roofs. That would not only create jobs, it would reduce the cost of heating our schools so more money could be spent on the important stuff, like hiring more teachers, buying more books, or even possibly lowering property taxes.
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p>That’s why no-one wants to pay more in taxes. The money is not spent wisely.
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p>2. You obviously didn’t read my column on Question 1, past the title. Here is the link; read before you speak.
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p>3.Your misrepresentation of my position — “Yes, we get that you think that as an owner of a million dollar home you think you pay too much property taxes, and you think the government is just out to waste your money, so taxes should just be eliminated, along with services, and most government entities” — is egregiously wrong and deliberately dishonest, and merits no further reply. I don’t even think YOU think this.
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p>4. As I said above, and always say, I’m all for public spending on public services. We can and should keep construction and other workers employed — but they should be building and doing the many things we need, instead of creating useless junk that will remain unused at worst and wreak environmental havoc at best. I specifically mentioned transit, education, and public parks as examples of good places for Deval to put that money. And as I used to say to Joe Nigro, the construction trades rep on the BRA, I could find sites for forty thousand housing units, the number I wrote several years ago in the Globe that we need to meet demand. Housing or parking lots — what do you think we should build?
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p>5. I am a landscape architect and urban designer, and would be much happier in a paying job (as I always had before I lived in Boston) instead of being a “rabble rouser” (which makes…whom, exactly, the rabble?). This would be possible if I were not black-listed out of my profession by our vengeful mayor and his allies at City Hall, in retribution for my investigation and dissemination of information about their doings.
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p>6. If you are going to post personal insults, you should have the guts to show who you are. It’s easy to take uninformed pot shots from behind a mask. If you want to make ad hominem attacks, stand up and state your name, so we can know where YOU come from on this topic, to put YOUR posts in their real context.
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p>You would think that. You would think that would have been the case with Casinos, with throwing deaf children and mentally handicapped children out onto the streets, transferring public land to private developers, supporting hack politicians like Wilkerson over committed grass-roots progressive like Sonia Chang-Diaz, staying neutral in the Sciortino-Trane fight or the more recent Smulowitz-Harkins primary. You would think a progressive governor would not cut public works, cut parks and recreation, and favor developers over the environment time and time again. You would think a progressive governor would stand up to teachers unions, police unions, construction unions, and would not bend over backward to appease special interests. You would think a progressive governor would stand up to DeLeo and Murray instead of brownnose them any chance he got.
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p>But I digress this is MA where anyone with a D next to their name can get away with just about anything.
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p>My scalp always gets a little itchy whenever a post leads off with exegetical delvings into other peoples motives… And then tells me, without suppport, that given motives aren’t supportable. It’s clear that jobs will be resurrected; after all, some of these construction projects aren’t new, having either been stalled or halted altogether by the economic downturn. So the claim that jobs won’t be supported cannot, itself, be supported. The claim of 1 billion in private investments, though seemingly large, isn’t as wild as one might be first led to believe, upon seeing such a large number.
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p>This is true. What is also true is the extreme difference in economic climate. I’m a New Deal Democrat. If I believed in FDR, then I ought to believe in a general government spending in a fiscal downturn regardless of efficacy or affect, and so I do. In fact, I don’t think this goes far enough. If we have an excess of retail space, then we ought to hire people to tear buildings down. We ought to spend well over half a billion putting people to work. Nor, it must be said, is this really 200 million in new spending since, as mentioned, some of the projects were merely halted by the downturn… So they were already underway and under construction when the process was held up. And it might be a sign of Gov Patricks handling of the stimulus funds and other infrastructure projects that they feel able to do this. This might, in fact, be a good sign of a returning economy…
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p>Not exactly. I don’t see this as any different than one of FDRs New Deal programs putting people to work, efficacy aside, and thus, as a progressive, I applaud it. I also happen to believe that the effect will be wholly positive. I think if Deval tried this, as might a Republican governor, during an economic boom, I would protest. But, given the economic situation I think this both wise and necessary. Or, put another way… that’s the way FDR woulda done it.
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p>All I was wondering was why we were not investing at least a major portion of this to putting people to work doing the much needed repairs on our public transportation system.
…that a real cost-benefit analysis should be done in any instance of a proposed tax break or government subsidy. In other words, how does the public benefit from either Liberty Mutual or the herein mentioned developers getting these benefits? It should also be re-evaluated every year. If a company says, “Give us a tax break or we’ll take our revenue and jobs elsewhere,” it would be fine to give them a chance, but if by next year that company has not been creating jobs, then we should rescind the break. If they say they’ll move out we should say, “Fine, you weren’t helping us anyway.” Any proposal like this should come with a direct public benefit on the other side of the equation and somehow save the state money elsewhere.
These “analyses” oftentimes take the most optimistic estimates from the town, consultants, and/or company, and present them as rock solid. Unfortunately, the second part isn’t happening — if companies can’t put up, the breaks should be taken away.
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p>Would that we had many policymakers at any level with the guts to do that.
An often cited report from Shopping Centers Today from 2007 or so calculated that U.S. citizens have 20.2 square feet of retail space per person.
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p>Sweden — not a poor country — has 3.3 square feet per person and the U.K. 2.5 square feet.
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p>Can you spell “bubble”?
The bubble our suburbs and exurbs make around dense (smart) growth?
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p>The bubble formed in our SUV-sized shopping carts when we pile up the crap in our weekly pilgrimage to shop?
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p>The bubble formed around our navels as we Americans get bigger and bigger in synergy with the size of our parking lots and our autos themselves?
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p>The huge bubble of plastic, containers, pizza boxes, and so forth that we pile at our curb once a week, the one that magically disappears within a few hours?
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p>I’m not sure to which bubble you refer.
Hi, everyone, I am Greg Bialecki, the state’s Secretary of Housing and Economic Development. I would be glad to have a policy discussion about our new program to jumpstart construction starts, but for starters, I wanted to share a few facts about the program:
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p>1. The Patrick-Murray Administration is investing more than any previous administration in transportation, education and open space, but this one program is about investing in housing and economic development and so that is what the Boston Globe story was about. We are not doing one at the expense of the other.
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p>2. Although the Globe story mentioned some of the projects we are working on, the complete list is on my website, so you can see for yourself where the investments are being made and for what. (The website lists the projects as construction commences, so some of the projects mentioned in the Globe story, like Natick and Hingham, will be up shortly, once they break ground.)
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p>3. As you can see from the list, there are affordable housing projects, projects in our older urban communities and rehabilitation projects as well (not just ground up new construction). So it is a good mix.
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p>4. On the commercial side, there are not a lot of retail projects, and when retail is involved, it is often part of a mixed use development that includes housing, office and retail. Not your typical “mall”.
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p>5. Also on the commercial side, the most common way for us to support private activity is not by subsidy, but by committing to fund the public infrastructure upgrades needed to support the project. This reverses a recent Massachusetts habit, where we have expected private developers to pay for any needed public infrastructure upgrades. I believe, based on several conversations, that Shirley and I agree that this is a bad habit that should be broken.
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p>6. So in Natick, for example, the public investment cited in the Globe article is actually an investment in upgrades to Route 9 in Natick, which improve traffic flow and allow for the expansion of a great educational software company called MathWorks, which will add 600 permanent jobs. As part of its expansion, MathWorks is building a new parking garage at its expense.
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p>7. Lastly, it is very true that one has to worry about overbuilding in a down market. Most of the projects we will be supporting have some or all of their tenants in place already. It is a great sign that the Massachusetts economy is recovering stronger and faster than the rest of the country that we have businesses and residents who want to fill these buildings once built or renovated.
I appreciate you sharing this, and I really appreciate your willingness (and courage) to “jump into the lion’s den”, as it were, to engage in a conversation here about an issue of substance like this. In my view, this really is the essence of how current and emerging technology can enhance the sometimes balky operation of government, especially at the local level. Welcome aboard!
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p>My question has to do with the upgrade you describe in your item (6). I note that the transportation infrastructure upgrade that you mention is to Route 9 in Natick. Specifically bearing in mind the other transportation infrastructure programs you allude to in your item (1), I wonder if you might do a brief contrast-and-compare between the Natick Project and the Littleton commuter rail project that will greatly benefit workers at the Littleton IBM facility (and the town of Littleton).
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p>Can you just sketch for us the state spending in each, the anticipated job creation benefits of each, and the (presumably positive) overall economic impact of each on Natick and Littleton?
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p>The link I cite to the Littleton project mentions a total of $2M in MBTA funding that, according the piece (I don’t see a date) is uncommitted. How does the contemplated Route 9 spending compare to the $2M amount needed in Littleton? Where does the funding for much-needed projects like Littleton fit into the overall state transportation strategy?
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p>I have the sense that you and Governor Patrick’s administration are, in fact, taking us in the right direction. Perhaps some specific cost/benefit comparisons between the two may make that point easier to understand and, therefore, sell (it is, after all, campaign season).
A good question. We see the job creation opportunities being as good or even greater in Littleton. That is one reason why Governor Patrick directed a significant amount of federal stimulus funding to upgrades of the Fitchburg line, including upgrades to the Littleton station. As you note, there is still a $2m gap, and I am working on that. It was not really an either/or decision with Natick, because the Littleton gap was identified more recently.
IS there any plan with regard to the condemned UMAS Boston parking garage?
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I will try to get you one.
So here is what I have learned…
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p>We are spending a significant amount of money to stabilize this parking garage, which (as you know) is in a serious state of disrepair and is not usable. Our stabilization work, which will continue over the next year or so, will not be enough to allow the garage to re-open. The longer-term fate of the garage will be determined as part of the on-going reconfiguration of the UMass Boston campus. But as one example of how we are investing in higher ed, the next step in the campus reconfiguration is a $155m new science facility, which will start later this year.
Welcome to BMG!
I appreciate your joining the conversation, but I don’t see real answers in your posting.
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p>I’ve learned that it takes a lot of investigation to really understand these public “investments.” Will the 600 jobs you say Mathworks will create be anything like the 600 jobs you said Liberty Mutual will create — that is, ordinary hiring (actually far less that its past ordinary hiring!)? Did you inflate the job numbers by 25% for Mathworks, without even telling the company, to justify a bigger subsidy — as you did for Liberty Mutual?
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p>And you say:
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p>Are you saying the Globe in error when it wrote,
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p>Without studying each instance, I can’t accept your descriptions of the projects or the subsidies. I still see a lot of superfluous retail and far too much parking, while transit and other public works languish and essential human services are slashed.
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p>The Globe quotes you as saying:
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p>That’s what I see. I see it in Boston, and I see it in the state. Building for the sake of building, when there’s so much that really needs to be done.
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p>I do agree, as you said, that the government, not the private sector, should fund public services, including infrastructure. The reason is that the government will (or should) fund services that promote implementation of long-term planning, support environmental health, and provide the broadest community benefit, rather than assisting only specific projects. But when government funds building for individual projects, or just for builders, that public purpose may be defeated, as is true for many if not all the “investments” in this list.
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p>It’s unfortunate and unnecessary, because there’s so much work that really needs to be done for the state — all of the state — to prosper in the coming decades.
Most of these projects seem to be 40B developments. Are we actually giving the developers direct grants ?
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Some of the affordable housing projects on the list are 40B developments and some are not. All of the affordable housing projects on the list are getting state financial support, either through direct construction subsidy, tax credits or low-cost financing.