The two gentlemen speaking to us at the special May 31 ‘Town Council Work Session’ (which was attended by none of our Town Council members) seemed to understand quite a bit about how Colorado’s ‘Urban Renewal Law’ has been utilized by private developers across the state. Even though the Law would appear to the average taxpayer to apply to ‘blighted’ property, developers and their lawyers have found ways to use the Law to gain government subsidies for ordinary, everyday types of property development.
We are listening here to Paul C. Benedetti, the attorney hired by the Springs Resort to promote the establishment of an Urban Renewal Authority here in Pagosa Springs:
“There are at least 50 municipalities in Colorado that have established Urban Renewal Authorities. You normally think of urban renewal as a ‘big city’ program, and when I attend these types of meetings, I often hear the comment that ‘we don’t have any slums here — this isn’t Detroit.’
“And that’s true in Colorado. But you do have municipalities that have properties that have problems. White elephants, if you will. Some municipalities have contaminated property; you have property that’s been platted incorrectly; you have very old infrastructure; you have flood problems; you have topography problems… or you have areas that have inconsistent uses, and you want to come in and develop it.
“And I think the way this Law has been used is that, especially in recent years, it’s evolved from the ‘big city’ program that you used to hear about, where they get a big bunch of money from the federal government, acquire a bunch of property, bulldoze it all down and build ‘super-block’ developments. The only place in Colorado that did that was in Denver, and they really only had one big project that did that, and that was downtown around the D&F Tower.”
That particular urban renewal project was rather controversial in its day, he noted.
Mr. Benedetti, as an attorney, seemed fairly adept at creative interpretations of Colorado’s Urban Renewal Law, but he might have been painting a misleading picture of Denver’s experience with urban renewal. My research suggests that the Denver Urban Renewal Authority participated in considerably more than “one big project.”
In the 50 years between 1958 and 2008, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA) participated in more than 75 redevelopment projects, leveraged over $8 billion of private investment, and provided financial assistance to over 15,000 low-income Denver homeowners, thus helping to rehabilitate and preserve Denver’s stock of affordable housing. (You can read DURA’s 50th Anniversary report here.)
I would very happily endorse the use of a Colorado law to rehabilitate and preserve our vanishing stock of affordable housing here in Pagosa Springs. But attorney Benedetti seems to see the Urban Renewal Law through very different eyes.
“The controversy around urban renewal projects has dissipated quite a bit, lately, because — I think — people are becoming more educated about how it can be used in sort of a targeted way. The conditions that qualify for an urban renewal treatment are listed in the statute. There are 13 different standards that you can use. You can have abandoned, substandard buildings… but you can also have a lack of streets and sewers, that are underutilized or under capacity… you can always have a blighted area of open land.”
Mr. Benedetti’s job, here in Pagosa, is to help the owners of the Springs Resort convince the Town Council to provide them with government subsidies for an expansion project, using an ‘urban renewal’ justification. The vacant land available for that expansion does not include any slums or abandoned, substandard buildings. It is simply vacant land. Plain old vacant land.
A couple of weeks ago, on May 16, a handful of local taxpayers attended an open community meeting hosted by Springs Resort principal David Dronet (pronounced “Drone-NAY”) and Pagosa developer Jack Searle, where we were shown some very preliminary drawings of a new hotel building and other commercial-looking buildings encircling some sort of ‘public gathering place’. The drawings were very preliminary, and Mr. Dronet declined to provide copies to the local media (even though we would have loved to have them.) He promised, however, that the community would be provided more complete drawings at some future date.
Based on what I remember seeing that evening, I walked out onto the vacant 27-acre parcel that attorney Benedetti was promoting as the site for a possible ‘Urban Renewal Authority’ treatment, and snapped a photo from the approximate location of the potential hotel building shown in Mr. Dronet’s (preliminary) drawings. This may be a perfect spot for a new hotel building. But would it qualify for taxpayer-funded infrastructure?
Colorado’s Urban Renewal Law specifically provides the following justification for urban renewal projects. I shared this already back in Part One, but it bears repeating:
31-25-102. Legislative declaration. (1) The general assembly finds and declares that there exist in municipalities of this state slum and blighted areas which constitute a serious and growing menace, injurious to the public health, safety, morals, and welfare of the residents of the state in general and of the municipalities thereof; that the existence of such areas contributes substantially to the spread of disease and crime, constitutes an economic and social liability, substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of municipalities, retards the provision of housing accommodations, aggravates traffic problems and impairs or arrests the elimination of traffic hazards and the improvement of traffic facilities; and that the prevention and elimination of slums and blight is a matter of public policy and statewide concern in order that the state and its municipalities shall not continue to be endangered by areas which are focal centers of disease, promote juvenile delinquency, and consume an excessive proportion of its revenues because of the extra services required for police, fire, accident, hospitalization, and other forms of public protection, services, and facilities.
The photograph shared above will probably not suggest, to most taxpayers, “slums and blight” that currently consume an excessive proportion of municipal revenues, and ought to be eliminated for the public health, safety, morals, and welfare of the residents of the state. Rather, it will probably suggest a lovely, green meadow currently devoid of development, with a lovely resort hotel in the background.
Mr. Benedetti assured us, however, that the above-quoted legislative declaration that clarifies the intent of Colorado’s Urban Renewal Law can safely and legally be ignored, because a Urban Renewal Authority can have a rather different purpose from the one suggested by the statute itself. Mr. Benedetti noted that a municipality can pick any one of the 13 standards included in the law to successfully and legally define an urban area as “blighted.”
When I read the law, I found only 12 standards that define “Blighted area.” (Perhaps there used to be 13?) None of them, in my opinion, would apply to the photograph shown above. (You can download the statute here and look at the definition of “Blighted area” on the second page.)
But attorney Benedetti apparently believes Colorado’s Urban Renewal Law can and should be interpreted, not necessarily as a tool for urban renewal per se, but as a tool for rural economic development — specifically, for delivering government tax subsidies to a hotel developer.
Apparently, he would like the Town Council to believe the same.