[Electronic-lan] The Pace of Apartment Constructi

[Carol Bowen]

Kirk, thank you for this information. I listened to some of the Steering Committee meeting. 

1. I got the impression that growth  is just more housing. 

2. Their discussion  did not have a vision of what we want to be. The default is we will be a bedroom community. 

3. The committee is not understanding the needs of a bedroom community versus the needs of an independent community. 

4. I did not hear a discussion of capacity of existing infrastructure.  The lack of awareness hurts the existing neighborhoods and streets   

Am I missing something?

Is the steering committee still taking comments? 

~ Carol's phone

> On Dec 16, 2017, at 10:01 AM, Kirk McClure via Electronic-lan <electronic-lan at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
> LAN Members –
>  
> Please see the attached analysis that I prepared addressing the long-term overbuilding in housing.
>  
> The real estate industry is prone to overbuilding.  This is true in all sectors, residential, retail, office, industrial, hospitality, etc.  This is true nationwide and in Lawrence.  The industry needs the public sector to regulate the pace of development.  Too much development is bad; overbuilt markets hurt existing space and older neighborhoods.  Too little development inhibits healthy turnover and the correct pricing of space.  The goal should be managed growth, which means growth in supply in close correspondence with the growth in demand.
>  
> Managed growth does not happen without concerted effort by the local government guided by instruction from staff planners.  Long-range planners should present annual reports to the Planning Commission.  The reports should include the type of analysis that I sent to you.  The analysis should be expanded from just housing to retail (comparing growth in inflation adjusted retail spending to growth in retail space); to office (comparing growth in office sector jobs to the growth in office space; etc.  The report should establish a sense of the Planning Commission’s past performance (are the various submarkets overbuilt? Balanced? Underbuilt?) and a sense of objectives for the next year or two (e.g.: Lawrence is expected to add 140 new renter households and needs x new rental units to absorb this growth).  Without these benchmarks, the Planning Commission is letting developers set the pace of growth, and we have seen this fail time and time again.
>  
> I suggest that LAN as well as neighborhood organizations push for growth management to be included in the updated Horizon 2020.
>  
> All the best,
>  
> Kirk
>  
>  
> Kirk and Jeannie McClure
> 707 Tennessee Street
> Lawrence, Kansas 66044-2369
> 785.842.8968
> mcclurefamily at sbcglobal.net
>  
> <Lawrence Housing Market Growth 1990 to 2017 notes.pdf>
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