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- [00:00]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Abby Newsham
This is Abby and you are listening to Upzoned. Hello everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of Upzone, a show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the Strong Town's conversation. And we epzone it, we talk about it in depth. I'm Abby Newsham, a planner in Kansas City, and today I am joined by Norm Van Eeden Peterson, who is the director of membership and development at Strong Towns. Hey Norm, how's it going?
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Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Hey Abby. It's going great. How are you?
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Abby Newsham
I'm doing really well. It sounds like you are traveling over the weekend and doing some Strong Towns work in California. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?
- [00:56]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Yeah, it was awesome. I got to go down to LA and then hit up Artesia, Santa Clarita, Santa Barbara and then San Luis Obispo. And so I made my way to all of the saintly cities and had a wonderful time there. Just really connecting with Strong Town's advocates. We did a couple of walking tours where we were able to be on the ground looking at what is needed in the community, but also some serious progress being made. I saw some amazing parking, protected bike lanes, which are like the sweet spot for me. Just finding opportunities to really use existing assets like our streets and just improve them. Even using things like vehicles and using them as great barricades to actually protect cyclists and other people as they're making their way through the streets. Saw examples of rehabilitated industrial warehouses that have been turned into not only coffee shops, but actually coffee shops with a distillery and a winery and other like small scale manufacturing taking place. And so it's exciting to see that type of adaptation of existing spaces, adaptation of the public realm and kind of grappling with the fact that as I gave several talks on housing, people are stressed and stretched by the fact that housing has become so incredibly expensive in those contexts. What I see is a lot more people trying to just figure out how do we not allow the threshold of who requires subsidy in our communities in order to be able to live adequately. For that threshold to keep rising and rising and rising is creating a lot of deep, deep, deep pressures in our communities. And so I met with like folks that were from the affordable housing societies and other groups like that and it was just energizing. I'm regularly energetic about things, but this was definitely a trip that I just came back like, really enthused, pretty exhausted. But you know that that good mix of delight as well as having really spent a lot of energy to do that. But it was awesome. We had almost 100 people show up in San Luis Obispo for a talk on housing. And there was just so much energy in the room. And it's really exciting to see that there's this big movement of people that really want to see change take place in our communities.
- [02:55]
Abby Newsham
That's really exciting. And of all the places in the United States that are talking about housing, which is everywhere, California is really where they've been feeling it for a long time and really acutely. But they've also been making a lot of strides in the public realm space, as you, as you mentioned, they have actually, I think we interviewed somebody maybe a year ago about some of the changes that they've made in L. A where they're actually going to be. They have to implement now their bike ped planning efforts rather than it being a suggestion that gets left up to political will. So it's exciting to see those sorts of things happening, actual implementation in progress.
- [03:37]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
And it was striking to me because one of my favorite parts was the bar that we gave the talk at in Santa Barbara set up by amazing local conversation leaders there. There were several people that were actually had showed up early so they would have room in line for the karaoke that was to follow. And so I suggested Strongtown's karaoke. But they actually stayed for the hour long presentation and both came up afterwards. They had never heard of Strongtown's, had no interest in what we, you know, or had. We were not on their radar. But especially the one of the older men, he said, hey, I'm a building inspector. That was my trade. I was a chief building official in Ventura county for decades. He said, it sounded to me like you want to get rid of all the regulations. And I was like, no, we need safety standards. We need to ensure that things don't fall flat and that customers are being properly able to purchase something that is going to hold its value. And he said, oh, in that case. And I actually agree with everything that you said. And I was like, oh, right, we're working at it and especially around the idea that our places need to adapt. And one of the slides that I shared was we need to remove our aversions to complex adaptation. And I think that really ties in, I mean, the conversation that we're going to have about corner stores and these types of things. But he could really see sort of the strangling impacts of everything being prescribed, everything having to go through a really extensive process in order for a use change to occur. And he was really struck by the idea that we can. We've done this to ourselves, but that we can actually begin to reverse this damage as well. The other older woman that was there for karaoke, I wish I could have stayed to hear her sing because she had some great pipes. She seemed to be really interested in the idea that she had had a good run at things in terms of housing availability for her and her family. But she said her kids are struggling. And this is why she, like, at first was like, oh, man, you know, I have to listen to, you know, I had replaced on the screen. It was. The basketball game was on the big screen. And all of a sudden it's like strong town slides up there. And, you know, instead of karaoke, you've got, you know, this, this passionate talk about what we've done to our cities and what we can do to change them. And they were hooked. They were interested. And I. I just find that to be really exciting as a part of this process.
- [05:42]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, totally. And by the way, we should definitely do a strong town's karaoke at the next gathering. Yeah, I want to hear that. I want to hear everyone sing.
- [05:54]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
And I've been practicing on the Oregon highway to Hell, so that would be another fantastic piece that is on Chuck's wish list. He wants to hear somebody play highway to Hell by ACDC on. On the organization.
- [06:05]
Abby Newsham
Wow. Okay. Okay. We have some ideas now for the next gathering.
- [06:10]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
There's probably somebody in our audience that already knows that piece and is ready to let it loose at the national gathering. Maybe that's our next show.
- [06:15]
Abby Newsham
Hey, I love that. I love that idea. Well, send Norm an email if you can do that for us. Well, I love the idea of complex adaptation because that's certainly something that is like the theme of the century and something we have such a strong aversion to as a society. And it's. It's so very much needed and kind of the theme of today's topic, which is about corner stores. So this is an article that was published in Bloomberg by Linda Baker entitled the Corner Store Comeback. So throughout the US Older neighborhoods are obviously sprinkled with these small, legacy storefront buildings. If you live in or spend time in a post world or a pre World War II city or town, you've probably seen these all throughout neighborhoods. A lot of them may be vacant where you're at. And even though many of them are vacant today, they are one of the most adaptable, resilient forms of real estate, so long as things are actually allowed to be placed inside of them. And it's likely that these little storefronts have probably lived a lot of lives over the past 100 years. It may have started as a grocer. It could have later transitioned into a barber shop or a pub or a bakery or other kind of small scale neighborhood use that you typically see in these little buildings. So this article explores examples of how small scale neighborhood retail is experiencing kind of a revival thanks to post Covid changes in shopping trends, zoning reforms, local incentives. An example that is brought up in this is from Spokane, Washington where they changed their code in 2017 to actually allow historic storefronts to be repurposed by Bright as neighborhood commercial uses, even in zoning districts that don't allow commercial otherwise. So buildings didn't have to go through a long rezoning process where they could be shut down. If you have a corner storefront building, a legacy storefront, you can just reuse it so long as it's a neighborhood oriented commercial use, which I'm sure is defined explicitly in their code. I didn't look it up. So other cities are following this trend by making it easier to reuse these legacy storefronts. Hopefully many will follow. This is one of my favorite building types. Personally, I love, love, love seeing storefronts get reused. There's so many creative ways to do it and I think that they are really critical for creating complete neighborhoods, complete communities. And I'm excited to talk about it. Norm.
- [09:04]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Yeah, and like you, I have several in mind that just come all sort of these relics of a bygone era that either are currently occupied or still exist in a neighborhood and yet have been turned into residences. And there is demand, there's interest, and there's almost this head scratching among certain city planners to be like, well, if only there were a place for us to put retail. And it's interesting too. I was down in Charlotte, North Carolina around the time of the national gathering and in the historic Cherry neighborhood, historically and currently black neighborhood in the community not far from the downtown, they actually have at the corner right next to their park, they have these little small parcels that are built up as I think a barber and a restaurant and a few other things like this. But as I was chatting with the representatives of the neighborhood association, they said the trouble is that the moment that it closes and doesn't have the exact same use that's allowed to basically continue. It has to remain a barber, it has to remain a local food store. The moment that that changes, it's almost like it evaporates. All the permissions are removed and and it just like sits there and now is not. Is exactly what everybody would want as a house, although it would probably make a good home for someone. But in the setting, like what if it was as, and this is what I love in the Spokane proposal, if it had sort of anything in its DNA that it served a function in the community in that way, it can be returned to that. And I think that's something that's really powerful and at least as just a threshold of how do we get started in bringing this back? And then looking a little bit further to say, are there any other structures that have similar characteristics? Maybe on, you know, on an actual corner, you should be able to waive the parking requirements because you have two street frontages. You should be able to bring it up to the street. So building out towards the front of it. And we have told stories of the opposite happening. Little coffee shops opening in homes that are then threatened by parking requirements is the most significant one. There's another project in Mooresville, North Carolina, where a road widening that was actually deemed to be unnecessary, but because they were widening the state road, it then impinged the amount of room that would be available for the entry into this 30 year old farmer's market that had been running there for 30 years as a permanent farmers market. And as a consequence of this, they said, you've got to go. And it just doesn't make sense. We've done this to ourselves. And so it's really exciting that Spokane and someone that's mentioned there is Spencer Gardner, who's been a longtime Strong Towns member, has written for the Strong Towns blog, has contributed his thoughts and insights and ideas, and he's been also able to bring those ideas into action in Spokane together with a team of dedicated staff as well as concerned citizens that are making that shift. And so I just love this. I can't wait to see more of this occur. I live in a suburb where we don't have these relics, we don't have these sort of throwbacks, but they're not that much further away. And we could learn from them and say, if you're in a similar setting, you should be able to do it. So I think there are many people that probably have the privilege or the luxury of having some of these, like old, you know, buildings that have the ties. And I'm mindful of what Jane Jacobs says, which is new ideas require old buildings. The idea that you want to get a fresh start or try something new, you can't do it in a newly bespoke luxury built project. It's got to be in something that's a little slapdash thrown together and yet that's where you test it, that's where you try it. And we've created the opposite where if you want to do something, you're going to have to go and build a new structure or custom customize everything and we can happen.
- [12:45]
Abby Newsham
Yeah. These little buildings are really the perfect opportunities to provide low barrier to entry opportunities, small businesses. Because to your point, when, when developers are coming in and building these larger five over one buildings where you have, you know, you have storefront buildings on the first floor that have 4,000 square foot tenant spaces and residential for five, six, seven stories on top of that. Those commercial spaces are, are much more expensive oftentimes than these little legacy storefront buildings. They're, they're really not well suited for small local businesses unless it's deeply subsidized. And I think a lot of people have probably seen these buildings get built and the commercial sits vacant for a really, really long time until somebody who's really well capitalized, probably a national retailer chain, will come in and utilize that space finally. But we really want our cities to be made up of small businesses, entrepreneurs, people having opportunities within our cities. And we should be looking at these buildings as those opportunities. And to your point, none of this is really a new idea. It's a growing rediscovery of the benefits of mixed use neighborhoods that were really purged from planning and development in the middle of the 20th century. We instead completely separated neighborhoods from commercial areas and our commercial destinations in the suburbs took this different form, which was very new at the time. We didn't, we used to sprinkle local goods and services throughout neighborhoods, probably, you know, in villages and cities for thousands of years before we all started driving vehicles. And it didn't matter how long it took or how, how long it takes to get from point A to point B, because we can just drive. And so we now have this, in this retail in the form of big boxes and strip centers surrounded by these massive parking lots. And you know, it's an incredibly utilitarian approach to retail. And we are now in a time I think where people want more from retail, they don't necessarily just want to. I mean you can order stuff online, which I'm kind of discovering finally as the person who's like 10 years behind everybody in my spending habits, but you can order kind of day to day stuff online. You don't need to go to these corporate chain stores and go looking for things and spend your whole Saturday running errands anymore. People want third spaces, they want experiences, they want destinations, they want to feel social, bump into people, see people, meet people. That's how I view all of this and that's where I view the real opportunity and why it is so important to let the entrepreneurs take these spaces and use them and do interesting things with them. And the extent to which cities can really directly support that, not only by making sure that regulations are not hindering it. Of course, you want to make sure building safety is very important. But we don't want to be making people, you know, over park their sites when there is no parking on the site or make the use standards too challenging to actually use the building. I would actually go further than that. I would like to see cities more explicitly supporting this kind of use in these kinds of buildings in a variety of ways beyond just the regulations.
- [16:31]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Yeah, a hundred percent. And it's, it's just about finding ways to reintegrate our neighborhoods. At strong towns, we have several articles on the idea of we've traded stability for efficiency. And so it is more efficient to send one milk truck, you know, a full size semi to one big box store instead of having milk runs where traditionally you would have, you know, a truck that would make stops all throughout all of these different neighborhoods and find their way sort of on their route. And that also was mimicked by bus routes that could follow much the same path from productive sort of little node to another little node and really having so much value in that. And another thing that I want to point out in this context is, you know, I know I understand what mixed use zoning is, but my concern is that a lot of what we call mixed use is just stacked segregated uses, so that there's a vertical stacking of still segregated uses, which suggests that we know what the appropriate use for every location in our city actually is, rather than leaving it to over time emerge and evolve and sort of letting the city through its spooky wisdom, tell us what needs to be there through the needs of residents in the place where it happens to be. And this is where you see, you know, we have designated 4,000 square feet of prime bank space. Who says that you need a bank when banks are actually closing many of their branches because of the shift to online banking, the less demand for retail banking. Think of pharmacies where more things are available either through sort of these conglomerated pharmacies or you're getting it mailed to you. And so out of this, what I really want our Cities to embrace is the idea of fluid zoning or fluid uses that if you're going to say, hey, in this area, it looks like it could probably accommodate quite a number of different things. And this can especially apply in situations where you have a form based code that specifies you have to have retail to open up the street, to make the street really vibrant, and then you can have also residences in those spaces. This was the situation in Norman, Oklahoma. And the developers came back and they said, we don't know that there's a customer base for retail. So every time that we say we're putting in retail at the ground level, it's this much square footage. We get told by the bank we aren't interested in a project like that because we don't think it'll pencil. So what if those street level units are actually made habitable as residences, but easily convertible almost with the expectation that at some point when the demand arises, much like these lovely homes have been turned into bankers offices or doctor's offices, dentists homes where you'll have somebody living on the second floor, but there's a sufficient demand for that location to have a new professional service or other type of use that you can see this conversion back. If we can turn warehouses into beautiful lofts that people delight to live in, we could do that with a lot of these sort of up and coming neighborhoods that for a time don't have the vitality or the amount of customer base required to get something open. But then in time it should just be as simple as saying, hey, by the way, we're switching and the new building code will apply and we can move ahead. And so I love what Ali Quinlan, and perhaps she's, I don't know that she originated this, but she said, you know, we need to eliminate or we need to regulate for nuisances, but not for use. Yes, that, yes, merge and evolve. But like the nuisance of an, a noxious odor or excessive noise, like we have tools to deal with that. But because we've so focused on getting it right up front in terms of eliminating various types of uses with all of the other sort of corresponding problems that that creates, we've kind of lost our way when it comes to this. And so one example that comes to mind is a Filipino market that was near Joy Station in Vancouver and it was a home for the Filipino community where there was a church nearby, many people there were immigrant settlement services that were in that neighborhood. And so the grocer was there as well while the building came up for redevelopment. The grocer was forced to find something and there was nothing in the designated retail zone or sort of specific node that was present there. The trouble is, is that they couldn't even take over, say, one of the houses nearby and say, we're going to put it on the main floor. We're going to be the grocer still in the neighborhood. But as we see in traditional neighborhoods, the commercial or the retail space always begins to sort of spill over, begins to grow. And that's how you get a great space. And instead they were forced to go over to an industrial park at some distance away without. Without adequate transit access. And as a result, the business died and the community suffered. And again, you know, my whole thing, we've done this to ourselves. And so it's really heartening. If you're listening to this, check out the article and the work that certainly that Spokane has done under Spencer Gardner's vision, but also other places that are starting to really get this. And what I think is striking is it applies across the board, small communities, even very rural, like remote areas, that have fairly rigorous requirements of what can be done in certain sites. And it's where people realize it's not worth the brain damage to go through the process of begging and genuflecting to get it changed. And so we wrote about Jug A Whiskey Junction, I think it is in Wyoming, just some, like, very obscure place where they've gone ahead and they've begun to convert more and more of their small structures and life comes back and, and new activities. They've got a cidery, they've got a general store, they've got like arts and crafts in this kind of random place. And Jill Winger, who's got a great podcast was, introduced us to what she and her family had done there. And you're like, that is how you bring back vitality into existing communities that may be struggling. And I think a lot of our cities really need this as well.
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Abby Newsham
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, it just makes me think of like the entrepreneurs that I know within my own city and just going through processes to reuse little buildings can be. It's, you know, it's not for the faint of heart. You have to be very patient going through these processes. A lot of entrepreneurs are kind of natural creatives, crafts type people. Like, I don't know that they mesh really well with like a zoning code full of uses that say, yes, you can do this, no, you can't do that. And. And so I completely agree with Allie that we really need to be Focusing on like sensory impact nuisances, building safety, kind of those basics. But yeah, every city having their own list of different uses. It's. As someone who works on zoning codes, it is, it's fascinating that it's like we have all these different lists of uses for different cities. As if, you know, this city X functions in a completely different way than city Y. And people need to just try to find their, find a way to align with the uses that are presented within multiple different codes, which is very challenging. And something that I've really seen a shift towards in a lot of codes is taking that use table and actually shifting it to be more about scale and number and size. Like a, like a large school versus a small scale neighborhood school or a small scale grocer and a, in a superstore, you know, and really splitting it up, splitting those up within the code to make them form based rather than use based. But still, I mean the use structure is a very interesting way to regulate our cities. And when, if you look at really old codes, you start to see things about like blacksmiths and things that aren't that, you know, uses evolve over time too. And so there's a lot of codes that are just totally outdated in that respect. I want to talk a little bit about what you said earlier, this, which I think is a really great word, complex adaptation. And you said that we have a social aversion to complex adaptation. I think you're right on. I kind of want to ask you, to ask you to talk a little bit more about that in your experience. And how would you recommend somebody kind of approach their own neighborhood or city and shifting that? If there's kind of a aversion to this idea of complex adaptation, allowing neighborhoods to breathe, to evolve, to I guess let go a little bit and let things happen without, I guess, society falling apart, which I think some people would be worried would happen. How would you approach that conversation in a place where maybe people are just kind of micromanaging their place and they're really afraid to let go and let creative people reuse buildings in creative ways?
- [25:17]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Yeah, I think that we accept the fact that like on a construction site there's going to be some mess. And so we put up fencing, we put up some cladding to make sure that it's not visible. But we accept in order to get the new thing, you have to have put up with a little bit of mess or even a bit of chaos. If you walk onto the construction site, you better wear steel toed boots because you don't know exactly where to step. And in that context we want to account for safety. But I think we actually need to have that broader sense that our cities are always a work in progress and actually beginning to sort of loosen up around the question of how many resources do you have to have upfront in order to set up something new. So the franchises are maybe the epitome of this, where you basically you go, you get your franchise license, you go, you get your franchise building template, and then you construct the whole thing. And then at the end you do this big like kickoff and now you're on the map as yet another franchise and away you go. And the city has been with you the whole time because it's predictable. They understand exactly what they're going to get. They can go to 18 of the nearby communities and see exactly what it's going to look like, much to everybody's delight. And then the realization, oh, we're not that special. Eighteen other places have the exact same thing. In this context, the difference is your under resourced entrepreneurs, the people that hustle are the ones that are going to sometimes come out of immigrant communities where they are newly arrived, looking to establish a new foothold and actually having a profound impact on social stratification and class within communities. I think there's so many things that we need to talk about in terms of the way that immigrant communities are essential to helping to overcome various stratas and class barriers, which is something we don't always talk about. But I think it's really important within the context of like the self made person is they have found ways to do that, but often without the ability to like meet the next big leap, that if you want to get into something, you have to suddenly generate a ton of capital, have everything just right, everything has to be clean, sort of very orderly. And yet what we see is that many of the places that we find to be interesting when we go visit them are kind of obscure, a little bit messy. You walk down an alley and all of a sudden you realize, oh, there's some really interesting things. I never would have known that this is here. And those are the result of a, a much more complex adaptation of existing spaces. And again it, it in some places is actually emerging out of a sense of exhaustion. We've run out of ideas of how to do this officially. So I was down in Port Arthur, Texas. Their master plan for their downtown is perfectly laid out. If you looked at that, you would say, wow, this is going to be incredible. They know where every little type of business is going They've segregated all of the different type of uses. You should see their parking requirements. They are very significant. And in that context, you. If you look at a map of Port Arthur, there's very little there. They've had so much disinvestment, hurricanes have struck numerous times. And out of that, what's needed is almost like an amoeba like structure that just replicates itself and grows and builds so that you begin to create adjacencies of other things that benefit from that close proximity to what is taking place. This is even where the whole question of lot sizes and parcel sizes is really important here. When we have a 24 acre site that's valued at $33 million for a big box store, who is able to come up with $33 million in cash? It's a very limited number of individuals. Meanwhile, when you look at your downtown, all of these places that are still the economic engine of much of your community, they're on a 0.2 acre site or a 0.1 acre site. And I just did the math in Santa Barbara, where the Macy's comes in at about $4 million per, on a per acre basis, is its land value on an 8 acre site. Meanwhile, they've got small little restaurants that are actually far less well served by public transit and other things like this. And yet they're $24 million per acre, $43 million per acre just for these sites, because they are, they're compact, but they benefit from adjacency. They haven't driven away any adjacent uses. There's concentration of prosperity through, through concentration rather than dilution of these things. And I think this is sometimes that, that opportunity that Chuck described in a city of Kamloops, bc, where they had a municipally owned parking lot, but nobody was using it near their downtown. And they said, oh, like, you know, we're trying to find a buyer. And of course they're asking big money because they need to. Chuck said, plat it, plaid it into small chunks, and then don't sell all of them all at once. Don't even, don't even put them up to sell them all to different buyers. He said, let the first several be built on, and then that will drive an increase in the capacity of that site to actually accommodate more so that you're not only building the front, say, say imagine it was broken into eight, a rectangle with eight with a line down the middle. You would build the front one, then you would actually build that back one for a different type of like complementary use. But you can't be too specific about what it'd be. It'll be off the street, might be a little quirky, might be strange, you know, might be a good spot for an art studio. And over time you begin to harness the value of what you've now demonstrated is proof of concept that something can thrive there. And you have thousands more potential buyers that can purchase $700,000 site versus the $33 million that you're asking for the whole thing. This is what we need to get back to. This is what our ancestors did. You go look at your historic city plats and the lot sizes actually fit the budgets that people would show up with. And, and land was cheap. And yet you still see this a realization. I mean land was. Yeah, or it was, it was certainly not scarce. And even in that time they were still doing like what might seem like bite sized chunks in comparison with sort of the American practice today. And yet these were the types of places that then became the hotbeds of economic activity. And I think this is where it's really critical that our neighborhoods recapture that and say at minimum, our corner should be thriving. And, and if we do that, it will radiate prosperity into the rest of the community as well.
- [31:17]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, totally. And I think it starts with really understanding why are these buildings vacant, what is the barrier to entry, to do something here? And going through those kinds of exercises. I mean even it would be great to see an exercise where city staff, local businesses went through maybe a conceptual example of what it would take to actually retrofit a building not just in terms of the construction costs, but also all of the standards that would come into play, processes that would come into play to really put a number to what the barrier for entry is and try to bring that down. I mean you could go through the code line by line as a planning staff and really ask with this in mind and ask the question, are these standards arbitrary or is there a reason for it? And if it's a major barrier, is there another way to address this that doesn't impact these small legacy corner buildings and small prospective businesses?
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Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Yeah, and Chuck writes well about that in the Strong Towns book, encouraging cities to consider and this is maybe the next stage of an adaptation process is are there standards that you can insist be fulfilled within two years of AKA instead of right up front? So obviously you don't want a staircase to suddenly end halfway up, you know, to the next level.
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Abby Newsham
We'll build the rest of it later.
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Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Requirements, but there's going to be other ones around you Know, maybe the width of an aisle or different things like that, that it may, or even. I mean, we have a lot of efficiency standards now. We have building performance standards. Those should be, in a sense, metered. So that way they come into effect maybe after two years, you, you give them that Runway and in that time you prove cash flow. You can go back to the bank for a bigger operating loan or whatever it is that you need for that and really make that difference. And so I love the exercise. Edward Erfert did this with a city staff down in Florida and other places that he's worked. He would go through line by line in their code as a city representative saying, how is it that we serve our community? How is it that we maintain a fair standard? But what are some of the ways that we've lost the plot and so gotten into our. Into. You know, in the classic example is when you have eight different relevant planning documents that all apply to that single site. And woe is the person that tries to just. They say, I fulfilled all the requirements on document A. They're like, yeah, but did you know about A, you know, B through G? And they're like, oh, no, like, okay, we're done. Like, I can't handle this. And often, especially when it's contradictory, when there's an expectation of one thing, but in order to meet that requirement, you actually end up, like, undoing what you did over there. It's like a set of moving cards or a house of moving cards. It just keeps collapsing. You can't get it up as you go along in that. So, yeah, so big stuff. But this is the type of small change that we really know that we could just make happen. And the Spokane thing is interesting. If you have in your city's DNA the existence of these types of exceptional sites, which were actually normal back in the day, just to say, let's greenlight those. At minimum, that's a good start. That's responding to what people previously identified was needed in the neighborhood and perhaps can be needed again.
- [34:33]
Abby Newsham
Well, and what is so unfortunate about, about that example is that local businesses, like people who are hustling and just trying to make something happen, they can't get through that process. But the corporate retailers sure can because they hire attorneys and they have the capacity to hire somebody to deal with the headache. And your point about immigrant communities is, I think, spot on because they may also have language barriers in addition to just not having the legal technical expertise to be able to wade through these codes. So going through some kind of practice where you're actually asking if certain standards are arbitrary or fair and serving your community and fulfilling the goals that your planning efforts say that they're trying to fulfill I think is a really, really good start. And you know, kind of thinking about the future, I actually think that we're headed in a really positive direction with regard to legacy storefront buildings. Cities are catching on. People are seeing the benefits. Codes take some time to change, but they certainly are changing. I actually think one of the greatest planning challenges is going to be more about what happens with these older suburban shopping centers. Because I think that as urban neighborhoods see reinvestment, population will grow, spending power will grow in the storefronts will evolve over time with new codes, people will rehab them and momentum will build. But there is a challenging aspect I think about when thinking about kind of suburban style commercial property. We see a lot of it is declining because it's very much been kind of a Ponzi scheme approach to retail growth where we're, you know, just, we just keep sprawling and sprawling and retailers move further and further out. A lot of these buildings are not built to last very long. And so you know, we, we know the prototypical example is Walmart closing and just going to the next next town over with the new building. And now there's this big empty building in the middle of a large site. And these sites are just not very adaptable and resilient like corner storefront buildings are. And they can sit vacant for years and you know, just kind of become this empty part of a community. Malls are another really good example where it's, you have to have a major plan to actually reutilize that land and what goes on it. And it's very controversial and challenging. And so anyway, I just long winded way of saying that I just think that's going to be a really challenging kind of part of the story that goes alongside this new emergence in retail. And these in the legacy storefront context.
- [37:36]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
And the less controversial version of mall retrofit or you know, shopping center sort of redes redo is to make it a public college campus or a church. The trouble is one, those, that's not a great built form for either of those uses. And two, it takes it off your property tax rolls. So now suddenly you have devoted ample amount of space to a non productive use. From the perspective of like is there, you know, a corresponding sort of improvement of your tax base? Now there can be reasons to have that public campus. There's, there can be, you know, certainly beneficial reasons for churches to be present. But if there were alternatives that would be far better than what it is that we currently see. And then there's also this realization that we're giving up on that ever becoming a thriving sort of retail sort of hub for our communities as well.
- [38:27]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm very excited about this topic. I'm glad that you suggested it because again, it's one of my favorite kind of buildings. I'm always very inspired when I see these buildings get reused in my own neighborhood, in my own city because there's, there's lifetimes worth of, of little projects that could happen out of this and they're often kind of led by the creative people doing creative things. So to me, it's very inspiring to actually see these buildings get reused. So before we end today, I want to do the Down Zone, which is the part of this show where we can share anything that we have been up to that we want to share with the audience. And I'm going to put you on the spot, Norm. I know we didn't talk about this before, so hopefully I'm not surprising you with the down zone, but what have you been up to?
- [39:18]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
Yeah. So I'm going to tell you about the best self help resource that I have for everybody that's listened this far. And the resource is called how to Become a Strong Towns Member. Because it is member week at Strong Towns. And I just want to say we need you. If you're already a Strong Towns member, we need you to continue to support what we're doing, to continue to help share these ideas, continue to broadcast what it is that's needed in our communities, as well as to provide real, clear, vivid examples of changes within our places. But how to Become a Strong Towns member is very simple. Its opening chapter says go to strongtowns.org membership strongtowns.org membership and when you make a donation of any amount, you'll become a member. Chapter two of the book actually details the fact that when you become a member, you are participating in helping to build the Strongtowns movement. I always say there are so many member adjacent people, but we really need, especially at this time, as we've just come through the election, we've just seen a slight decline in our membership which we attribute to a lot of times, people, people's attention being sent to other things, people having to pull back because of the economic situations that they find themselves in. So if you're in a situation where you can give a little or maybe give a little more, please do sign up and become A Strong Towns member. Like I said in chapter two, it's all about ways that you will find that it actually helps to clarify your own stance within your community. When we connect with our Strong Towns members, they're like, yeah, I'm a member of this movement. I'm not just throwing money to be like, hey, I liked, you know, Abby and Chuck and op zoned. Or, you know, there's. There can be a little bit of that. So definitely, if you want to make your contributions for Abby and Chuck in their honor, go for it.
- [41:02]
Abby Newsham
Do it for me. Yeah, there we go.
- [41:04]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
We'll see. It's like the different. You know, sorting by different. Who's. Who's the most popular. If that's your motive, let's definitely do that. And then chapter three of this fantastic book is just, thank you. Thank you for listening to Upzone. Thank you for being part of what we're doing. And again, if there's a way that we can be supporting you. We have rolled out in the past year specific coaching for local conversation or local leaders. We have just massively expanded the resources that we provide to our local conversations. We have weekly office hours where myself as well as other experts are just able to. I'm not an expert, but I bring them on. The experts. We sit down, we talk through, like, hey, what are you dealing with in your community? How can we work through those things together? We're looking at programs for local government officials, the national gathering. There's just so much I could tell you, so much more. But that's chapter three, which is. There's so much more to what we're doing. And being a member is a really key part of that. So it's a great book. Definitely recommend it. Head to strongtowns.org membership to make a contribution and become a Strongtowns member today.
- [42:11]
Abby Newsham
I love it. Norm, that's great. Yeah, we should definitely do a contest between me and Chuck, and I'll. I'll raise money in my honor. Just. Just kidding. Well, so I don't have anything quite that exciting to share, except for I found an artist a couple of weeks ago, a songwriter called Lola Young, who is like only 23 years old and is from southeast London. And I have just been totally hooked by her music. She has a voice that's kind of like. It's kind of like Amy Winehouse. And she actually is signed to her old label, and she. She's very young. Her songs are excellent. She has amazing. Just. Just the. The sound is amazing. It's kind of alternative, indie, British, Pop music, has really cool videos and she has a very powerful voice. And I think she's going to be very, very famous one day. So I've just been listening to that a lot and going through her albums over the past couple of weeks, which has been a lot of fun, especially because I'm. I guess I'm also in the process of converting my basement into a painting studio. So, yep, I've got the dehumidifier down there and it's made a huge difference. And framing some walls to put things up on. Not like fully, just, you know, just the framing so that I can hang canvas on the framing. No drywall or anything crazy like that.
- [43:53]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
So, yeah, residential use, just to let the planners know.
- [43:57]
Abby Newsham
That's right. Yeah. If you're a KCMO planner, don't come at me. It's a home studio. Just kidding. It's manufacturing. I'm manufacturing acrylic paintings in my basement. Don't tell anyone, but yeah, it's been. It's been a fun process. And I've got. My basement is accessed by. It's like a. Like a secret door hatch in my floor, in my kitchen. So that's how you get down there. And so I've been having a lot of fun, just like playing Lola Young music and working on my house. And so I'll. I'll have to send you all pictures once it's officially set up, but it's coming along slowly but surely.
- [44:39]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
I love that. And maybe through a little bit of projection we can. Rumor might be that Lola Young's also a strong towns member, but you haven't heard it from me.
- [44:48]
Abby Newsham
That would be cool.
- [44:50]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
We can hope. We can hope. But yeah, I will go and check that out. That sounds awesome.
- [44:55]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, yeah, of course. Well, Norm, it's been great having you on today and hopefully you can join me again soon.
- [45:02]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
I would love to. Thank you so much.
- [45:05]
Abby Newsham
Yeah. Awesome. All right. And thanks everyone for listening to another episode of Upzoned. Bye, Norm. Thank you.
- [45:11]
Norm Van Eeden Peterson
See ya.
- [45:12]
Abby Newsham
Let me show you what I'm about to do down tonight. Get up.