ISSUE #4--KURA: Putting the Urban Into Ketchum
Sowing the Seeds of Retail Destruction
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Putting the Urban into Ketchum
Do you ever feel like Alice living in Wonderland? When institutions chartered to do a certain thing do the opposite of that thing, it does feel a bit Wonderland-y. In my observation, the Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency, which is supposed to revitalize the commercial core, is sowing the seeds of Ketchum’s destruction. It is bent on starving the business community of the parking it needs to remain viable.
An urban renewal agency is mandated to “renew” blighted urban areas. Financing 4-story lot-line-to-lot-line housing boxes is not in its statutory purview. The agency is supposed to invest in infrastructure like sidewalks and roads. KURA has little money for that because it is putting the lion’s share of its (actually our) resources into housing in the core. KURA has gone rogue.
Where is KURA’s Independence?
KURA is supposed to be an independent agency, independent of the City Council and City Hall. Mr. Lipton asserts it is independent at every meeting. But let’s look at the facts. It is objectively not independent if City Hall.
The Mayor appoints the members (confirmed by the City Council) and thus controls KURA via controlling its membership. Two of the members are City Council Members. City Hall essentially supplies the Staff. The executive director ran the Bluebird 1 project for the city as Ketchum’s City Planner. The Council has frequently used KURA as a piggy bank to fund things a URA isn’t intended to fund.
Whose Interests Does KURA Protect?
Besides two City Council members, the board is packed with people involved in development rather than people who represent the businesses of the commercial core. Why is that?
One of the KURA commissioners does not live in Ketchum. He said at the last meeting that he “avoids” coming into town. Yet he is making decisions for Ketchum residents and taxpayers about housing, parking, and how millions of dollars of taxpayer resources are spent—how is that “good governance?”
Is KURA about Urban Renewal at All?
Contrary to its statutory mandate, KURA is on a mission to replace parking with housing in the downtown core. It plans to dedicate up to $20mm of Ketchum taxpayer resources to replacing a 64-space parking lot with a 4-story, lot-line-to-lot-line box of 66 “affordable” housing units. The project will have 44 parking spots for 66 units. By my count, there are 1.3 cars per housing unit in Ketchum. That’s 100 cars for 44 spots. Where will the other 56 vehicles go?
Oh, we know where they will go—they will get parking permits to park on City streets (see my previous post on Ketchum’s parking plan).
KURA has become another cog in the Aspenization machine being run out of City Hall. The Mayor and prior City Council foisted the Washington lot on KURA to get KURA to pay for the move of City Hall to its new location so that Bluebird 1 could be built in the commercial core of Ketchum. While Mr. Lipton now says the Washington lot was always intended for housing, when the City approved the KETCH buildings to be built without parking, the Mayor and City Planner assured the community that this lot would be used by new residents whose housing did not have parking. Did the Mayor lie?
Right Project, Wrong Location
As I wrote in Issue #2, KURA’s Bluebird 2 is the right project in the wrong location. It is financed with a novel structure brought to the City by the Wood River Community Housing Trust (WRCHT). That approach, unlike the financing structure used by the City in Bluebird 1 (and Bluebird 0, aka Northwood Place, and the one to be used for Bluebird 3 at the Lift Tower Lodge), can require tenants to work and can charge rent based on a percent of income—rents go up as tenant income goes up. WRCHT is a local non-profit that recycles money in the community. Contrast that with the for-profit developer who takes money out of the community from his Northwood Place and Bluebird 1 projects.
Better locations for housing projects are the light industrial park or on land by the Water Treatment Facility. They are not on the City’s current list for the Bluebird Program. Instead of parking AND housing, City Hall has unnecessarily chosen more housing with less parking. And supposedly “independent” KURA is all-in on the game.
The intent and purpose of Urban Renewal Agencies are to revitalize underutilized and blighted land by building needed infrastructure to encourage development. They are funded by incremental increases in property taxes in designated districts. Those increased taxes are diverted from other taxing districts for the life of the URA, a maximum of 24 years. In the case of the Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency (KURA), the County, Ambulance, BCRD, Ketchum Cemetery, Jail, even the City of Ketchum are the taxing districts affected. The idea is that once the KURA is retired, those taxing districts will have benefitted with greater increased taxes created by the work of KURA.
So the question is; Is KURA fulfilling their obligation to the deferred taxing districts to get maximum taxation from the development they are enabling/encouraging with their infrastructure improvements?
Good point. Albertsons owns it.