Overrun by development

When land prices go up, and city infrastructures are stressed, developers must make their case that they belong in a city.  Some are offering amenities the city needs, or making plans to mitigate the problems they will bring.

For years home builders have had to give up land for open space if they wanted to build in a city.  This is legal because the city determines how much new housing will impact city services and demands the exaction.  Development rights, along with precious land, are a sellers' market now, and the city is in the driver's seat.  If this wasn't so, then why are developers eager to tear down any building in town to build something new.  Why should we incentivize this behavior?

On a smaller scale than Silicon Valley, Lake Oswego does not need to bend over backwards to please developers; the city can ask for more.  What is it worth to allow more intense development only to lower our quality of life?  What should we be asking for?

Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2015  By Eliot Brown
Tech Expansion Overruns Silicon Valley
Resistance to office developments raises questions about future of industry’s home base

Excerpts:
Water isn't California's only scarce resource.

Room to grow is evap­o­rat­ing in Sil­i­con Val­ley as tech­nol­ogy gi­ants’ ap­petites for ex­pan­sion are running up against res­i­dents weary of clogged streets and cramped classrooms brought about by the boom of re­cent years.

Some com­mu­ni­ties are al­ready saying they have reached their lim­its of de­vel­op­ment, while oth­ers sig­nal that day is near, rais­ing ques­tions about the abil­ity of the tech sec­tor to keep ex­pand­ing in what has long been its home base.

“The econ­omy has out­grown the place,” said Gabriel Met­calf, chief exec­u­tive of the Bay Area regional-planning-fo­cused non­profit SPUR. “The speed of eco­nomic change is much faster than the speed of com­mu­nity change.”

There are com­muters “back­ing up on to our city streets that are caus­ing tremen­dous in­con­ve­niences for our res­i­dents,” said Randy Tsuda, Mountain View’s di­rec­tor of com­mu­nity de­vel­op­ment. “It’s now com­pro­mis­ing gen­eral liv­abil­ity.”

“Sil­i­con Val­ley is re­ally strain­ing to deal with traf­fic and trans­porta­tion,” he said. 

Just to the north­west in Palo Alto, long an epi­cen­ter of ven­ture cap­i­tal and top star­tups, ten­sions are run­ning higher. The City Coun­cil in late March ap­proved a plan that would cap an­nual of­fice develop­ment at just 50,000 square feet in three main commer­cial ar­eas of the city.

Real-es­tate de­vel­op­ers and tech com­pa­nies, fear­ful

such re­sis­tance could hin­der growth around their head­quar­ters, have been of­fer­ing numer­ous ben­e­fits with pro­posed de­velop­ments in an at­tempt to offset the added strains they bring. To help clear the way for de­vel­op­ment in Moun­tain View, for instance, the firms have of­fered a va­ri­ety of give-backs rang­ing from added parks to trans­porta­tion improve­ments, some of which were re­quested by the city.

For now, as the firms plot ways to ex­pand, of­fice va­cancy is rapidly disap­pear­ing, caus­ing rents to soar in the most pop­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties.

For now, rents—and oc­cu­pancy—are at far more rea­son­able lev­els in cities to the south, such as Santa Clara and San Jose. That is largely be­cause em­ploy­ers view these cities as too long a com­mute from San Fran­cisco, which has emerged as the home base for young em­ployees.

Mean­while, the rapid rise in costs in the more pop­u­lar cities makes life dif­fi­cult for ex­ist­ing employers, par­tic­u­larly those lack­ing piles of cash. For in­stance, the nonprofit SETI In­sti­tute re­cently gave up about one-third of its space at its tiny Moun­tain View head­quarters.