Downtown Astoria has a number of vacant storefronts. Meanwhile, just five miles away in Warrenton, Walmart has plans to join a growing population of big-box retailers including Costco and Home Depot.

Susan Trabucco, who chairs the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association, said this is good news. The big retailers will draw people to the northern Oregon Coast.

“Then we can lure them to downtown Astoria for a different kind of shopping experience,” she said.

Finding silver linings is what a new downtown revitalization effort is all about, Trabucco said. Her association hired Michele Reeves of Civilis Consultants in Portland to go through the neighborhood block by block and identify ways to attract visitors and economic development.

“We’ve brought in the big guns to help us,” Trabucco said.

Reeves is helping people in the community identify and promote what is unique about it. That’s not difficult to do in Astoria, Trabucco said.

The town’s Victorian homes and coastal village character make it a popular movie location. Astoria has hosted filmmakers of “The Goonies,” “Short Circuit,” “Kindergarten Cop,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III” and “The Ring Two.”

“You can’t compete with the small-town environment with the river and the mountains in the background,” Trabucco said. “The local architectural stock is also very important.”

The trick, she said, is parlaying that quaint reputation into serious economic development. Consultants are looking at everything from the big picture to the smallest details.

“Our one-way street grid apparently drives people crazy, but if you live here, you don’t notice it,” she added. “We’re also learning you don’t want gaps in retail. If you have retail, retail, service business, retail, gap, it turns people off.”

Officials at Oregon Main Street, a State Historic Preservation Office program that helps communities come up with revitalization strategies, are working on a plan for Astoria in concert with Civilis Consultants.

The city of Astoria, Astoria Sunday Market, Pacific Power and the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association have contributed $20,000 toward the revitalization plan, Trabucco said.

People involved in the effort will come to North Portland on Jan. 15 for a bus tour of the Mississippi Avenue neighborhood to learn more about urban areas in transition.

Reeves is scheduled to make her final presentation, along with Sheri Stuart of Oregon Main Street, in March. A precise date has not been set.

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Daryl Birney of Warrenton does not like Walmart.

However, as a member of the Warrenton Planning Commission, he cast the deciding vote on Thursday that let the retailer build a store along Oregon Route 101.

When a motion was made on three applications regarding the development, Birney joined commissioners Paul Mitchell and Henry Balensifer in voting against it.

“It was more a protest vote more than anything else,” Birney said.

When the five-member commission decided to break the applications – including the overall site design review – into three separate motions, Birney was the swing vote in favor of Walmart.

“The fact that we didn’t like Walmart had nothing to do with it,” he said. “We didn’t have a leg to stand on. We needed to have a finding of fact to tell Walmart what it did wrong, and the truth was it did nothing wrong.”

Rachel Wall, senior manager of community affairs for Walmart, said the retailer will ultimately prove positive for Warrenton and the northwest section of the Oregon coast.

“We look forward to bringing hundreds of jobs and a new, affordable shopping option to Warrenton,” she said.

The land-use applications came before the commission from PacLand, a Seattle development company working on behalf of Walmart. The proposal now goes to the Warrenton City Council.

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I’ve been a student of urban renewal and tax increment financing for the past three years, trying quickly to take in an extensive and complex topic. And even though I’ve only been involved with the issue for a short time, it’s not hard to tell that its use is changing rapidly.

My first experience with the economic development tool was in my hometown of Warrenton, where the city created a URA around a large swath of commercially-zoned, vacant land that has since become a big-box retail center. The idea was to create a URA that used property tax dollars to entice the first few developments in hopes that private dollars would follow – an idea that pretty closely sticks to the purpose of urban renewal.

One could argue about how blighted the area actually was, but few could doubt that it was actually blighted (it sat through the boom years of real estate without one development coming to fruition).

But since I’ve moved back to Portland and started covering urban renewal on a statewide level, cities have blown my mind with how far they’ve gone with urban renewal. They are getting far away from its original purpose: removing blight.

Take the recent ordinance adopted by the Wilsonville City Council that would create a single-property urban renewal area. The city doesn’t qualify for the state’s enterprise zone program, so it decided to create a URA that emulates the property tax abatement program. The city argues the area is blighted because the 400,000-square-foot building on the property has been vacant for a handful of years.

The usual urban renewal naysayers are against ordinance and believe it sets a bad precedent. I’m inclined to agree with them; not 48 hours after I ran a story on the ordinance, I got a call from a developer in Astoria who wants a similar URA around a property he owns. He wants to convert an old industrial building into a boutique hotel, but he doesn’t want to pay for the expensive structural improvements.

I’ve also reported on , which would allow two changes to urban renewal I believe to be irresponsible. First, the bill would permit urban renewal plans to include school construction or reconstruction projects (remember that schools don’t pay property taxes, and new ones don’t increase the property tax base).

Second, the bill would allow urban renewal plans to add certain noncontiguous land to URAs in order to receive funding. Think about that. You’re supposed to create a URA in a specific area to remove blight in that area. That’s why taxing districts go with it. They may lose money for a few decades, but in the end, the tax base for that area should increase significantly. Can you imagine what would happen if the city of Portland could take money out of the successful to pay for a pet project downtown?

The bill has the best intentions – it’s being pitched to get a new school in the David Douglas School District – but it would be abused by struggling cities. And from what I hear, the bill is getting quite a bit of attention in the Senate and has a chance to be approved.

There are more stories, too. Cities use urban renewal dollars to buy buildings they will use for city services. Cities use urban renewal to buy fire trucks. And the farther these urban renewal projects get away from their original purpose, the more I think we need to take a deeper look at the state’s definition of blight.

The post What exactly is ‘blight?’ Oregon needs a new definition appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I’ve been a student of urban renewal and tax increment financing for the past three years, trying quickly to take in an extensive and complex topic. And even though I’ve only been involved with the issue for a short time, it’s not hard to tell that its use is changing rapidly.

My first experience with the economic development tool was in my hometown of Warrenton, where the city created a URA around a large swath of commercially-zoned, vacant land that has since become a big-box retail center. The idea was to create a URA that used property tax dollars to entice the first few developments in hopes that private dollars would follow – an idea that pretty closely sticks to the purpose of urban renewal.

One could argue about how blighted the area actually was, but few could doubt that it was actually blighted (it sat through the boom years of real estate without one development coming to fruition).

But since I’ve moved back to Portland and started covering urban renewal on a statewide level, cities have blown my mind with how far they’ve gone with urban renewal. They are getting far away from its original purpose: removing blight.

Take the recent ordinance adopted by the Wilsonville City Council that would create a single-property urban renewal area. The city doesn’t qualify for the state’s enterprise zone program, so it decided to create a URA that emulates the property tax abatement program. The city argues the area is blighted because the 400,000-square-foot building on the property has been vacant for a handful of years.

The usual urban renewal naysayers are against ordinance and believe it sets a bad precedent. I’m inclined to agree with them; not 48 hours after I ran a story on the ordinance, I got a call from a developer in Astoria who wants a similar URA around a property he owns. He wants to convert an old industrial building into a boutique hotel, but he doesn’t want to pay for the expensive structural improvements.

I’ve also reported on , which would allow two changes to urban renewal I believe to be irresponsible. First, the bill would permit urban renewal plans to include school construction or reconstruction projects (remember that schools don’t pay property taxes, and new ones don’t increase the property tax base).

Second, the bill would allow urban renewal plans to add certain noncontiguous land to URAs in order to receive funding. Think about that. You’re supposed to create a URA in a specific area to remove blight in that area. That’s why taxing districts go with it. They may lose money for a few decades, but in the end, the tax base for that area should increase significantly. Can you imagine what would happen if the city of Portland could take money out of the successful to pay for a pet project downtown?

The bill has the best intentions – it’s being pitched to get a new school in the David Douglas School District – but it would be abused by struggling cities. And from what I hear, the bill is getting quite a bit of attention in the Senate and has a chance to be approved.

There are more stories, too. Cities use urban renewal dollars to buy buildings they will use for city services. Cities use urban renewal to buy fire trucks. And the farther these urban renewal projects get away from their original purpose, the more I think we need to take a deeper look at the state’s definition of blight.

The post What exactly is ‘blight?’ Oregon needs a new definition appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A 53,000-square-foot commercial development is planned for the Oregon Coast.

The Coast River Business Journal that the Edmonds, Wash.-based First Western Development Services will develop a commercial complex just west of Astoria, in Warrenton. Anchor tenants include Staples Inc., Big 5 Sporting Goods, Dollar Tree and O’Reilly Auto Parts.  The excess 3,000 square feet not being used by the anchor tenants will be leased out in the future.

The development firm is in the process of purchasing a 5.5-acre tract of land for the project slated to begin in early June. The Seattle-based Pennon Construction Co. will be the general contractor on the project.

Warrenton, a town of 4,500 people, has recently seen a big box boom. A Home Depot and a Costco have been built in Warrenton during the past few years, and plans for a Goodwill retail center and a Walmart Superstore are in the works.

The post Warrenton commercial development planned appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.