Possible Painted Lady Building Program - Eureka, California

Potential "Painted Lady" Program

Ereuka, California has a wonderful downtown.  On the water, and with great architecture. Like many older central cities, it needs more middle class residents to help revitalize the downtown.

The city could make an effort to promote redevelopment of under used properties by asking the architectural schools in California to design homes for your city that look like your nice historic homes, but are actually condo buildings. The city would make an effort to get builders and developers to build some of homes. 

The marketing effort could be aimed at people in San Francisco and Seattle.  They would have an opportunity to buy a new condo near the water in the historic downtown.  And if they bring their high tech business and or job, so much the better.

If you would like to brainstorm this with us and turn it into a fleshed out program, we would be glad to do so.  We are retired economic development professionals and planners.  This is a no cost proposal from us - we would work with you for the fun of it. 

Let us know if you are interested. Thanks for your consideration. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies

https://pincladymansion.com/

More photos of Eurkea, California

https://photos.app.goo.gl/4jxzL8aRcxRaQbDTA

Economic Development in Eureka

https://www.eurekaca.gov/408/Economic-Development

7/03/2023

Eureka, CA July 1, 2023

 

The Mansion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson_Mansion

The Club ingomar.org

Cost of Solar and Wind Energy

  

In March 2021, Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that "renewables are the cheapest power option for 71% of global GDP and 85% of global power generation. It is now cheaper to build a new solar or wind farm to meet rising electricity demand or replace a retiring generator, than it is to build a new fossil fuel-fired power plant. ... On a cost basis, wind and solar is the best economic choice in markets where firm generation resources exist and demand is growing."^[80]: 24

They further reported "the levelized cost of energy from lithium-ion battery storage systems is competitive with many peak-demand generators."^[80]: 23 BNEF does not disclose the detailed methodology and LCOE calculation assumptions, however, apart from declaring it is "derived from selected public sources".^[80]: 98 Costs of gas peakers are substantial, and include both the cost of fuel and external costs of its combustion. Costs of its combustion include emission of greenhouse gases carbon monoxide and dioxide, as well as nitrogen oxides (NOx), which damage the human respiratory system and contribute to acid rain.^[81]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Planning Back in the Day, Before CAD Computer-Aided Design

 

These gentlemen are part of the Pantheon of Planners.  

Thanks to Ben Morris for sending this photo.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/life-before-autocad-1950-1980/

https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/2017/08/02/architects-engineers-before-auto-cad-software/

Lower Cost Housing

From https://www.thebulwark.com/, an excellent site.

Housing

Slow Boring Matt Yglesias https://www.slowboring.com/ looks at county-level maps of population decline, which is a little like peering into a crystal ball:

He notes: “[T]he issue in the contemporary United States is that the average growth rate is very low. Fully 47% of counties lost population between July 2021 and July 2022.”

An interesting corollary to this fact touches on one of my hobby horses: housing.

One big problem with population decline is that it makes houses too cheap. I know, I know, I’m normally talking about how it’s bad when regulatory barriers make houses too expensive. But it’s also bad for houses to be too cheap.

Why? A concept I learned about years ago from urban economist Issi Romem and that I wish was in wider circulation is the idea of the market price of housing vs. the replacement cost of a house. The market price is obvious: if you put your house up for sale tomorrow, how much could you get for it? The replacement cost is what it would cost if a tornado demolished your house tomorrow and you had to rebuild it from scratch. . . .

In a scenario of population decline, though, the market value of a house falls below the replacement value of the structures. You can see this by looking at statistics, but it’s pretty easy to eyeball where it’s taking place because the signature is a neighborhood with more vacant lots or vacant buildings than ongoing construction projects. Huge swathes of Detroit are, infamously, like this. But it’s also true of Cleveland and St. Louis and Milwaukee and Baltimore and other cities. Abandoned or vacant buildings are a source of blight — negative amenity value to the neighborhood. And each city with a significant amount of vacant property has its own policy apparatus for dealing with it and its own local discourse about the merits of that apparatus and whether the problem should be handled some other way. In years of reading about this, though, I’ve never heard of a city that has a magic formula to deal with vacant lots and blight. What I have seen is the vacant building problem vanish in my own neighborhood in D.C. due to robust market demand for housing. I’ve also seen in Chicago that a city can be capacious enough to support a lot of construction activity in the West Loop, even while significant swathes of the South Side look a lot like Cleveland.

Read the whole thing.

________________

The cost of housing in much of the USA is a major concern. In the high growth "hot areas" housing costs are too high.

One way for a person to get affordable housing is to move to one of the many counties where population growth and the cost of housing is relatively low. This works best for people who have a pension and people who can work from home.

You want a nice area with little congestion or traffic.  A good location is in a low growth low cost area that also has a University or College, which means that there will be interesting things to do nearby.

The four counties or cities below area areas where I have lived recently, and show the average cost of a home from Zillow.com. The costs are not as high as California or New York, but still higher than the national average

Manatee  County 445,000 Bradenton 384,526

Sarasota County 462,500 Sarasota City  454,834

Cook County       285,000

Lake County     294,000

Will County      290,000

The Counties and cities below are lower cost counties in Illinois. As you can see home prices are much lower.

Lasalle County   156,000

Peoria County    119,643

Fulton County     94,011

Macomb      91,161

Macomb is a nice rural community in western Illinois and home to Western Illinois University. As you can see, homes are affordable. One also wants to check crime rates.

Macomb

https://www.bing.com/homes/map?q=homes%20for%20sale%20maccomb%20il&filters=tsource:%22realestate%22%20gscountry:%22VVNB%22%20RealEstateMarket:%22en-us--en-ca%22%20subsegment:%22houses%22%20segment:%22generic.carousel%22%20catguid:%22084A2E71-0952-451E-B247-C6BC2CF5B211_00000000DF3A4440-00000020FDAA56C0-SH-TWFjb21i%22%20secq:%22homes%20for%20sale%20maccomb%20il%22%20supwlcar:%220%22%20ctype:%220%22%20eltypedim1:%22House%22%20mltype:%220%22

Some other affordable areas in Illinois.

References

Zillow.com

https://www.redfin.com/county/476/FL/Manatee-County/housing-market

https://www.redfin.com/county/494/FL/Sarasota-County/housing-market

https://www.redfin.com/county/727/IL/Cook-County/housing-market

https://www.redfin.com/county/810/IL/Will-County/housing-market

Photos on March 27, 2023

 

Westminster Point Pleasant

Click for more photos:

https://17003rdave.blogspot.com/

Our Country is Depressed

Our country is certainly in a pessimestic mood.  The data above was from an online poll conducted by my Congressman, Republican Buchanan from Florida. I am an optimist and answered that our children will have things better, but obviously the majority of the respondents anticipate things getting worse for our children.

There are many reasons for this pessimism. Part of it is the constant drum beat of "how terrible everything is." The political party that is out of power has an interest in telling everyone how bad things are.  And 1/2 of the country believes it. And the party out of power changes every few years, so the negatives are from both sides.

Our environmental movement folks also believe that our country and the world are headed for environmental disaster, with global warming being a major concern. They also constantly tell us how close to doom we are.

And wars, patricularity the Russian Ukranian War, and challenges from North Korea, China, and the middle east cause constant worry. 

Racial minorities are angry and demanding a better deal. And constantly telling people how bad things are.

______

Wow, in writing this discussion I have succeeded in making myself depressed. I guess I will change my vote.

_____

But on further reflection, I change back to optimism.  I realize that the political party out of power will always be saying how bad things are now.  Knowing that makes me tend to dismiss their complaints.

We have made tremendous strides in environmental improvements.  Our rivers and streams were badly polluted fifty years ago, and are now much better becasue of the enormous amount of money and regulations that we accomplished.  Our air quality is much better.

We are making great strides in green energy. Renewable energy continues to rise and will continue.

The world is becoming more affluent. More people are leading more affluent lives. Health care continues to improve.

We face rising threats from Russia and China. But nothing so bad as what we faced in World War II and during the cold war.

_____

Ok, I am optimist again.  A pox apon the nattering naybobs of negativity ( A great line by Spiro Agnew.)

Will bad things happen?  Of course they will.  But the trend line is much more positive that what is pushed by our modern day Cassandras.

South Suburban Airport - Chicago

 

Video Clip of SSA Airport Conference https://youtu.be/brFPENchQkA Please review this clip of the Press Conference for the South Suburban Airport and share this video in your networks. The Conference supports HB 2531 passed by the State Government Administration Committee and is now headed to the House Floor.  The Bill amends the Public-Private Agreements for the South Suburban Airport Act and provides that the Department of Transportation shall (instead of may) establish a process for the prequalification of offerors. This requires the Department to commence the prequalification process within 6 months after the effective date of the amendatory Act. Thanks to Participants: State Rep. Will Davis State Rep. Debbie Meyers-Martin State Rep. Anthony DeLuca State Sen. Patrick Joyce Mayor Rick Reinbold, Richton Park Mayor Vernard Alsberry, Hazel Crest Mayor John Ryan, Alsip Mayor Roger Agpawa, Markham Mayor Christopher Clark, Harvey Mayor Bob Kolosh, Thornton Mayor Joe Roudez, University Park Mayor James Ford, Country Club Hills Mayor Jonathan Vanderbilt, Park Forest Rich Twp. Supervisor Calvin Jordan Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce  Chicago Southland Economic Development Corp.  South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association  Southland Friends of Labor  Will Grundy Building Trades Council  Kankakee County Friends of Labor  Economic Alliance of Kankakee County  Southland Regional Mayoral Black Caucus  South Suburban Action Conference  Southland Black Chamber of Commerce & Industry  Coalition of African American Leaders  Black Contractors Owners & Executives  South Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium  Illinois Road & Transportation Builders  The 10x10 To Win  International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150    Please contact me if you would like to contribute to the next step in bringing House Bill 2531 and the Chicago Southland Airport to reality. Thank You.