Middleton's Developer-Friendly City Council Ignores Residents' Concerns

By Bob Allen

Members of the Middleton City Council and developer Terrance Wall’s people are quick to point out that Tribeca Village has been a long time coming. When the developer’s hired guns whip out charts showing how many times this wildly ambitious project has been mentioned at various city meetings since 2005, Council members nod along.

Apparently mere members of the public who recently became alarmed at the possibility of a Wal-Mart anchoring the project simply weren’t paying enough attention. Any objection we raise now is just too little, too late.

That was the message sent when the Council gave its first green light to the project on Feb. 19, two weeks after a packed public hearing produced much anguished testimony against the city approving another big box before its first one even opens its doors. The 6-1 approval happened with no acknowledgement of this vocal opposition, or the petition turned in that evening opposing any new big box.

To heck with the rabble, the developer has deadlines to meet.

Granted, the first green light is just one of many that the developer will need before breaking ground. The developer offers soothing reassurances that Wal-Mart isn’t interested, for now at least. The Council and its committees will have other opportunities to influence the specifics of whatever gets built on the north end of Parmenter Street. Presumably, they might even do more than smile dismissively at citizens who bother to comment along the way.

But this first green light was a huge one. It gives general zoning approval for a big box and all the baubles and bangles that Wall has dangled so far. His pretty pictures have dazzled the Council into promising Tax Incremental Financing incentives for developing what can only be described as prime real estate. The city is poised to give TIF assistance to all Tribeca but the big box.

Councilors say giving the gift of TIF to Wall is the only way the city can have some leverage in guiding what happens on the property. And through some clever gerrymandering worthy of a Texas congressional district, the Tribeca TIF district will wind its way down to the vacant storefronts of Allen Boulevard.

The Allen corridor comes as close to a legitimate use of TIF as Middleton can claim. Tax Incremental Financing originally was intended as a tool to help struggling municipalities attract development to areas unlikely to be developed without some help. It is used to finance improvements through bonds that are then retired with payments in lieu of taxes. While the bonds are being retired, the city, school district and county collect no taxes on the properties. It’s a sweet deal for a developer.

TIF has been used extensively by Middleton, as has the argument that it’s the only way for the city to have any control over development.

The result is a commercial zone west of the beltline chock full of chain stores and the cartoonish architecture of franchise restaurants. If this jarring landscape represents the forward-looking vision the city had in mind, one can only wonder what we would have ended up without the wondrous influence of TIF.

Proponents argue that an Allen Boulevard TIF could not stand alone because it wouldn’t generate enough revenue to finance the infrastructure improvements needed.

Sadly, at this point, the argument is probably true. Why would a developer undertake the more difficult task of redeveloping within the confines of an existing neighborhood when they have been conditioned to expect the performance-enhancing drug of TIF for the much simpler job of bulldozing cornfields on the edge of town?

The fact is, Tribeca has a lot of good elements. It represents a commercial approach to New Urbanism: building at higher densities, mixing uses, corralling parking under or within structures. Architecturally, it fits together. Unlike the discordance of Discovery Springs, each building shown in the pretty pictures of Tribeca actually compliments and references its surroundings.

Tribeca simply would have made a lot more sense before Middleton encouraged and enabled an explosion of development that has given us a business mix already heavily lopsided toward retail. It would have made more sense at a time when older areas of the city weren’t struggling with vacant storefronts while redeveloped parts of downtown still go begging for stable tenants.

While Tribeca’s cheerleaders are eager to point out how long they have been pushing the proposal, they appear oblivious to the fact that today’s economy looks very different than when Tribeca had its public debut.

Tribeca might have made sense before the current meltdown in residential and commercial real estate. It might have made sense before the sub-prime mortgage scams began to unravel, shaking high finance to its core and undermining banking on an international scale.

It might have made sense before foreclosure rumblings on a major Madison condo development that was once considered a lock, or before it became clear that another ambitious west side condo development would remain half empty years after completion.

It might have made sense before crude oil topped $100 a barrel, calling into question how long we can maintain an economy based on driving long distances to buy imported junk from stores with 12,000-mile supply lines while using maxed out credit cards.

In theory, the City Council is supposed to evaluate market conditions and review a consultant’s report on the viability of Tribeca before giving the project another needed green light.

On what assumptions will such a report be based? Consultants don’t make money spreading doom and gloom. Developers can’t afford to project pessimism. Our city leaders seem disinclined to challenge prevailing wisdom, riding a permanent high of self-satisfaction from Money Magazine’s “Number One” rating last year.

It all adds up to the dangerous assumption that the economy can do nothing but grow, that an economy based on buying and selling imported products is somehow sustainable, that our way of life will be nothing but the same in the future no matter how deep our federal government digs its deficit, no matter how tenuous the supply of oil becomes, no matter how much the economic and natural climates change.

Nobody can predict the future. But it makes sense to at least consider the possibility that life two or five decades from now will change in ways that shatter today’s assumptions. Failure to do so adds up to what Kentucky writer Wendell Berry calls “arrogant ignorance”.

In his 2004 essay “The Way of Ignorance” from a book by the same name, Berry writes: “We identify arrogant ignorance by its willingness to work on too big a scale, and thus put too much at risk. It fails to foresee bad consequences not only because some of the consequences of all acts are unforeseeable, but also because the arrogantly ignorant often are blinded by money invested; they cannot afford to foresee bad consequences.”

Tribeca’s backers will claim that the risk is being assumed entirely by the private investors who somehow see a sure thing in what can only be described as a massive gamble. But the city and its taxpayers have exposure here too.

What if the traffic clogging big box gets built, but execution of the snazzy parts of the project goes dormant due to deepening problems with the national and world economy?

What if, in the mean time, companies that actually make things and offer a more sustainable future and better paying jobs more worthy of the gift of TIF come along, but the city has used up all its TIF authority?

What if the project gets part done, falters, and foreclosure follows. Who pays off the TIF bonds? Meanwhile, the city would have more traffic, more services to deliver, more streets to plow and more area to police without any additional revenue?

These are all worst-case scenario questions, and maybe they will be asked at some point. Maybe some already have been explored in all those committee meetings where we count on our elected officials to ask tough questions.

It would be hard to tell from watching the Council’s eagerness to please T. Wall at its Feb. 19 meeting. And there sure weren’t any tough questions being asked when the Council adjourned en masse to a bar down the street. There, they merrily shared pitchers of beer with T. Wall and his entourage, who were grinning like cats that had just swallowed a flock of canaries.

Not surprisingly, as the beer and easy banter flowed between the developer and our elected officials, I didn’t see any of my petition-signing good neighbors at the table. Their concerns seemed very far away indeed.

Maybe this is just how it’s done in the good neighbor city, where Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss would now surely feel quite at home.

All is for the best. Hey, who’s got the next pitcher?