American Dream

One of the more amusing parts of Portland's smart-growth plan was a mandate to turn the parking lots around the region's largest shopping mall into apartments and greenspaces. The mall was rezoned so that the owner would have to comply with this mandate if ever it expanded the mall. Parking garages were to replace the parking lots, but garages cost about ten times as much per space as surface parking, so who would pay for them?

The answer, not surprisingly, is taxpayers. Clackamas County just agreed to use urban-renewal funds to pay for a parking garage at the shopping mall as a part of a major remodel/expansion of the mall. SUch urban-renewal funds come from tax-increment financing, so they presume that there will be increased property tax revenues resulting from the investments of those funds. While tax revenues will increase as a result of the mall expansion, they would have increased even without the parking garage, so the county is effectively taking taxes that should be going for schools and other services and using them to achieve planners' smart-growth dreams.

This Oregonian article doesn't say anything about apartments, but some of the county money will go towards "plazas" and "other amenities." The county investment will total $20 million. I bet a lot of schoolrooms could be funded for $20 million!