Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

interviews with developers who have invested in Pennsylvania cities and towns Developer John Westrum, Westrum Development John Westrum founded Westrum Development Company. Westrum, with approximately $100 million dollars in annual sales, has transformed or is in the planning stages of developing under-utilized and environmentally challenged properties in the cities of Philadelphia, Camden, Burlington, Trenton and Chicago into thriving, market-rate residential and mixed use communities. We develop in towns and cities that welcome the growth that suburbs oppose. In 1998, we were the only private developer building large-scale projects in the entire city of Philadelphia. After years of developing in the suburbs, land was becoming more and more expensive and opposition to any kind of development was growing. After a while it seemed like every time I showed up for a zoning hearing at the township hall, there would be a note on the door – MEETING MOVED TO SCHOOL GYM DUE TO LACK OF ROOM. At the same time, older cities and towns in Pennsylvania were asking developers to come and develop on underutilized and less expensive land. As I thought about it, I realized that the ﬁght to convince suburban governments to let you build on farmland wasn’t half as rewarding as changing blighted urban areas and helping cities thrive. So, we sold all our suburban assets and decided to specialize solely in urban redevelopment. At Westrum we seek large developable sites in a town or city with a game plan – at minimum, a town with a detailed comprehensive plan that identiﬁes where they want to see redevelopment. There is a great deal more predictability for the developer when a town is committed to seeing a site redeveloped. In development, every day that we wrestle to obtain site control of land or try to allay community opposition costs thousands of dollars, so we need to be able to show our lenders and other partners that we can gain site control quickly and without serious community opposition. We look to the Mayor and City Council to get behind the project and explain to their residents and businesses why new development is something that they should support. The clearest sign I know that a municipality has a game plan for redevelopment is a Request for Proposals – an RFP that describes what local government wants to see on a site that they have assembled or are willing to assemble. Westrum only does developments in large scale. We don’t pick up lots one or two at a time and ﬁx them up. So we need the town to be committed to assembling land, whether through foreclosure, eminent domain or negotiated purchase. The town should seek input from developers before issuing the RFP – maybe the Pennsylvania Homebuilders Association would offer some help – in order to ensure that the market can support what they are asking a developer to build in their community. We also need help ﬁnancing the project to cover the added expense of assembly or environmental remediation on a brownﬁeld site and to develop in an unproven market for new housing and retail. When we began developing on brownﬁeld sites in Philadelphia, like our $100 million dollar project in Brewerytown, we could make the numbers work because Philadelphia offered a ten-year tax abatement. The tax abatement allowed the end user, the homeowner, to take a risk on a property in an untried market because they knew that for ten years local taxes would be forgiven. From a developer’s point of view the tax abatement was particularly effective because it was applied equally across the city and was not tied to politics. For a town, it meant that land that was currently producing little or no taxes, would continue to do so for another ten years, but after that a large amount of new tax revenue would become available. Local governments should get the State involved very early in the process. The Governor’s Community Action Team has helped make projects a reality by making things happen, identifying possible funds, and then delivering them. They need to be a part of any discussions around new development. Finally, I think it is important that towns know that we want them to succeed and we are not demanding that they have the perfect site for redevelopment. If they had evidence today that every house would sell and every store or ofﬁce built would be ﬁlled within six months, then they wouldn’t need Westrum. We don’t expect the locations we build in to have a history of success stories in the past few decades. We do expect them to work with us to gain the support of their community and to stimulate the market, not only on the land we develop but for the town as a whole. A developer must take extraordinary risks to develop in towns without proven markets and we need a supportive local environment – like anyone else, developers want to be wanted – only for us, it’s a necessity. Developer Mark C. Schneider, Fourth River Development Mark Schneider has overseen over $500 million in innovative Pennsylvania real estate projects in the past 20 years. As President of the Rubinoff Company, he developed Washington’s Landing – a mixed-use waterfront development, Summerset at Frick Park – a 700 home Traditional Neighborhood Development, and several other brownﬁeld redevelopment projects in Southwestern Pennsylvania. In May, 2006 Schneider joined together with two senior employees from The Rubinoff Company to form Fourth River Development, LLC with the express vision of developing brownﬁeld sites in Pennsylvania’s older urban cities and towns. Development in Pennsylvania’s older communities is ﬁrst and foremost about partnerships. Fourth River Development is currently shopping for land to redevelop in the state and to me, this means looking for effective local partners with the political leadership and the will to bring new investment to reinvigorate their communities. A partner can be an elected ofﬁcial, a community development 35 INTERVIEWS WITH DEVELOPERS WHO HAVE INVESTED IN PA CITIES AND TOWNS

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

PA Community Revitalization Desktop Guide Table of Contents How To Attract High Impact Investment to Core Communities Goal One: Choose One Asset-Rich Redevelopment Area Interviews with Pennsylvania Mayors Goal Two: Prepare Redevelopment Area for Market Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Three: Welcome Investment Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Four: Apply Strategies That Work Conclusion

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