Why districts? For me, the most pragmatic and shrewdly capitalistic case looks like this.
Central Richland has some of the very best bones in the whole northwest, almost entirely uncapitalized on its potential.
Every other city in the region would kill for what Richland has naturally: a downtown immediately adjacent to waterfront. Kennewick? Cut off from the Columbia by 240 and industrial development. Pasco? Virtually all privately owned. Richland? Our waterfront is mostly parks that directly connect urban neighborhoods to the river.
It’s gold and we’re squandering it by things like allowing new development like waterfront drive thrus! And who loses? Citizens who want a great downtown, yes, but also—we’re leaving SO much money on the table.
Cities are effectively a business—Richland as a city is like Apple before Steve Jobs came back. Incredible talent, incredible product, and awful leadership.
True mixed use urban development is extremely profitable for the city. As one example, the assessed value of the Park Place development (650 GWay) is $22 million—the only large mixed-use development in downtown in the last 20 years and it’s not even that great of one. Its immediately neighboring property was assessed at just $1.5mm. The vacant lot across the street at the enviable intersection of GWW and Jadwin? Assessed at just $390k!
$22 million is a lot more than $1 million. And that means 20x tax revenue that can go into new development, better schools, public health resources, public transportation, and more.
Now consider the vast majority of downtown Richland is surface parking. The religious loyalty to preserving surface parking—driven by people who think of Richland as one-size-fits all—is costing us as citizens. It’s keeping us from having a wonderful downtown, a walkable community, and tons of resources for our kids, and keeping us from drawing young urban dreamers to build new things in our great city.
And it’s because many (not all) people who live in South Richland think of and treat central Richland as something to drive through.
I have heard multiple people say “we don’t need districts—Richland isn’t a diverse city.” Really? Really?? You’re not going to build a waterfront downtown in Badger Mountain South! You’re going to build it in central Richland or you’re going to fill it with drive thrus.
And quite frankly Central Richland serves Pasco and Kennewick residents with more privilege than we do Central Richlanders who want to live in an urban neighborhood. We prioritize moving them through our downtown above all else. We invest in the bypass highway and funded a new bridge with our car tabs in order to reduce South / West Richland traffic on GWay and we still prioritize Kennewick and Pasco commuters’ drive time more highly than the dreams Central Richlanders have for their neighborhood. And again, all Richlanders and all Tri-Citizens suffer for the lack of capitalization on downtown Richland’s potential.
And it’s all a simple lack of vision and courage combined with regional party politics and real estate development on cheap land that’s all behind that.
In order to create the kind of transformative development needed, we need real long-term leadership grounded in the area—people like former mayor John Fox and others who had the vision for what Columbia Point could be and helped it take shape over many years. And they did so because he and many of the old guard who built up what we love about Richland lived in North/Central Richland!
I believe most problems are a problem of leadership. But we’ll never raise up the new Central Richland leadership we need with our current voting structure – we will continue to elect people in districts who see Central Richland the way South Richlanders or Kennewick or Pasco people view it—something to drive through.
John Fox introduced me to the 20th century’s preeminent urban anthropologist Jane Jacobs with this quote: “It’s not enough to bring people downtown, you have to put them there.” We’ve got ‘em there and we’ll get a lot more of ‘em there. Now we need to give them a voice.
Otherwise we get waterfront drive thrus instead of building one of the great northwest downtowns.