"Northcross Wal-Mart fight about a lot more than a site plan"

So reads the subtitle of Michael King's piece in the Chronicle.

This was one of the sentences that caught my eye: 

So whatever happens in court, RG4N and the neighborhoods are to be congratulated for taking on the landlords and the city on behalf of the rest of us and insisting that whatever a decades-old plat says, the residents of the neighborhoods -- and the citizens of Austin -- have a right to be heard and considered on a project that will transform their daily lives.

"A right to be heard and considered" means a "veto."  Or at least the right to press the city for a veto.  The notion that the city can veto any use that stirs up enough intense neighborhood opposition underlies a lot of RG4N's rhetoric.

I agree that this is what the fight is mostly about.  I just come out the other way on it.  It's a very bad idea to give city council a veto over a project just because the neighborhoods don't like it, or they don't like the developer, or they think the project will harm their interests. 

For each piece of property, there has to be a bundle of entitlements that come free from public interference.  We can debate what that bundle ought to be.  A given piece of property could have a big bundle, or it could have a small bundle (e.g., just an entitlement for a single family home with a maximimum size, setbacks, impervious cover, etc.). But if everything is subject to public debate, every development becomes a potential political contest.  That might sound good to a progressive's ear -- "power to the people" and all.  But it is bad policy, for at least four reasons: 

1. The resulting uncertainty reduces expected returns and the incentive to invest, leading to systematic underinvestment;
2. Political campaigns are expensive -- they cost the property owner money and the neighbors time and effort -- but don't produce anything of value, and are thus a deadweight loss; 
3. A development may be welfare-maximizing and yet be vetoed because of the intense preference of a minority (the same dynamic saddles us with farm subsidies); and
4. Giving city officials unbridled discretion to decide who will make money is a recipe for corruption.

Note that I don't rely on "natural law" or some supposed innate right to do what you want with your property.  Natural law (like international law) does not exist.

There are of course lots of uses that require permission (conditional uses, variances, zoning changes, EPA permits, etc.).  But every piece of property carries a bundle of entitlements that do not require government approval.  That's a good thing.

Northcross is zoned GR.  The City made a determination a long time ago that general retail was appropriate for that site.  A Wal-Mart is a legal use for that site. RG4N's complaints about garden centers, trees, and drainage don't challenge that fact.  They are just attempts to force Lincoln/Wal-Mart to comply with the Big Box ordinance, which changed the rules. 

Some think traffic is different -- lots of people are genuinely worried about the traffic -- but it's not really.  Opponents can complain about traffic any time a more intensive use is proposed.  This is why the City has a fairly well-defined traffic-review process, established by ordinance, and overseen by professional traffic engineeers.  We should not turn traffic into a proxy veto.  Whatever the ultimate result of RG4N's lawsuit, it will not establish that neighborhoods have the right to veto projects they intensely dislike.

You may think that general principles don't matter here, that Northcross is a special case, but if we are willing to sacrifice principle here, why not elsewhere?  Don't fool yourself:  when neighborhoods have the power to obstruct a development, they usually use it.  My neighborhood fought a Walgreens on South Lamar (South Lamar!).  Neighborhoods fight piddling infill development all the time.  People will use the power they have to extract concessions.  You can bank on it.

(M1EK has posted his own reaction to King.)

Comments

[Tim]

I think the traffic concerns are bogus. Pretty much everyone who's bought property in that area knew they were buying property next to a mall. A mall. Not a strip mall. Not a few stores. But a mall. A mall that also happens to be Capital Metro's North-Central transit center.

If NorthCross had experienced a resurgence the neighborhood could have easily experienced MORE cars than a Wal*Mart.