John Scarffe, Nederland. Joe Minicozzi, who makes presentations throughout the United States and assists cities with downtown planning, spoke to Nederland residents and Town officials on Monday night, October 24, 2016. Ten members of the Nederland Board of Trustees, Downtown Development Authority and Planning Commission and about 25 members of the public listened to the presentation and then participated in a joint work session.
The presentation was brought to Nederland by Downtown Colorado, Inc., a nonprofit, membership association committed to building better communities by providing assistance to Colorado downtowns, commercial districts and town centers.
Minicozzi gave a slide presentation explaining how cities increase property tax revenues by increasing the density of downtown areas. He said he wanted to explain how taxation works because the policies run counter to smart growth.
“You have to be careful of the questions you ask,” Minicozzi said. “Make sure your gathering all the data you can.”
Minicozzi is a founding member of the Asheville Design Center, a nonprofit community design center dedicated to creating livable communities across Western North Carolina. Before moving to Asheville, he was the primary administrator of the Form Based Code for downtown West Palm Beach, Florida. Minnicozzi has developed award-winning analytical tools that have received national attention, and he is sought after as a lecturer.
Minicozzi told the residents and Board members that most of the buildings in downtown Asheville had become so dilapidated they needed to be torn down. A man came along and invested $15 million into the downtown buildings and infrastructure, and the Town benefited from his investment through increased property taxes on the buildings, which had increased in value.
The more the city and residents added businesses and improvements to the downtown district, the better the city did financially. Minicozzi compared property taxes from a heavy downtown area with an area covered with a big box store, such as Wal-Mart.
The downtown area made considerably more in property taxes than a big store and parking lot because of the density of the occupants.
“You have to keep it in balance,” Minicozzi said. You have to have a lot of single family residential areas and this business stuff. From a land use perspective, what use of your land has the greatest potential?
Minicozzi said he was going to Clear Creek tomorrow. The Henderson Mine is closing in the area, and it brings in 30 percent of total property taxes, Minicozzi said. “Most of these folks don’t know how bad it’s going to be when it shuts down.”
Idaho Springs is a little bit ahead of Nederland as far as downtowns go, Minicozzi said. They have a downtown business district valued at $4.6 million an acre, and they have residences right across the street from Starbucks.
Minicozzi also did a study of Durango last year. The town is a lot more isolated than Nederland, which has traffic coming up from Boulder and Denver.
They push for a lot of open space so less than 50 percent of the land is taxable, and 45 percent has to pay for the rest. About 1 percent of the acreage provides about 35 per cent of the property tax income. City residential is more potent that Home Depot for property taxes.
“Start with your data and then add your value statements on top of that,” Minicozzi said.
After the presentation, Mayor Kristopher Larsen said that since so many people attended they would throw it open to questions from the public. Local Business Owner Ron Mitchell said he was a major business owner in the downtown area and wondered if Minicozzi had any recommendations of what might work here.
Minicozzi said that he doesn’t have the financial pictures of where the Town is. “You guys need to develop. I’m familiar with your plan and your project,” Minicozzi said to Mitchell. “It’s a very big project that would have dramatic change to your community.
“If you’re going to have change, how you do that is something you guys are going to have to have a conversation about. I can’t solve it after one conversation,” Minicozzi said.
He said the town needs to have a style and design conversation, saying the Katmandu Restaurant is just a box with a weird thing around it. “You could be in worse spots. You could be Missouri.”
After questions, the work session began among Nederland Board members with the intention of discussing density and how Nederland will approach downtown development and identifying the next steps to get past the obstacles.
The next meeting of the Nederland Downtown Development Authority will be at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at the Nederland Community Center.
