An apartment's reversal of fortune.

This summer has obviously been a pretty dry spell in terms of blog posts, but now that I just arrived back in the country a few days ago, I hope for the pace to pick back up before too long.  August may end up a tad scattered, since I will begin the month with a move to Detroit and a new immersion program.  But I also expect this change in locale to elicit some exciting new topics for contemplation, reinvigorating the continual learning process.

Keeping up the theme of continuous learning, I offer a groundbreaking post today.  While it isn’t my first revisit of an old blog topic, this is the first time I’m gone back to view an old site precisely with the purpose of showing how my assumptions and conclusions were apparently originally wrong.  Late last fall, I covered familiar ground by delving into the Westminster Apartments,

Upon first glance, Westminster was a pretty run-of-the-mill place: an auto-oriented, low-rise complex dating from around 1970 that manifested the telltale signs of decline: visibly worn common space, wooden decks and siding that were sufficiently rotted to compromise the overall stability, meager landscaping, obvious vandalism of the buildings through graffiti. 

Like many apartment complexes in Indianapolis and across the nation that date from this time period, what began as middle-class rental housing had devolved over the years, as newer, more modern buildings opened in the vicinity, featuring newer appliances and other amenities.  The property management team for Westminster could have maintained the buildings, but, because federal Section 8 benefits will guarantee them secure tenancy no matter how poor the condition of the buildings, the owners had no real incentive to improve the structures.  After all, even though Section 8 caters to a clientele with incomes far below middle class standards, the institution writing the majority of the rent checks—i.e., the government—always pays in time, meaning that landlords actually get an incentive for letting their property deteriorate to the point that it only can attract Section 8 tenancy.  It appeared last November that this phenomenon was exactly what had afflicted the Westminster apartments.  It’s happened to dozens of buildings in the suburban reaches of Indianapolis over the past 20 years, where suburban units that previously attracted young professional families are now overwhelmingly lower-income.  The result is that suburban districts of Indianapolis that were virtually crime free in the 1980s are now hosting concentrated poverty and all the concomitant social woes.

But there’s a catch: Westminster is not in the Indianapolis city limits.  This building sits just south of County Line Road, squarely within the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood.  And Greenwood remains a fast-growing, desirable, middle- to upper-middle class suburb, with well regarded schools, a flourishing mall, an expanding greenway network, and a growing logistics/trucking industry that capitalizes on the suburb’s strong access to Interstate 65.  By all metrics, the Westminster should not need to downgrade; it could remain attractive to middle-class people if only the property managers had bothered to maintain it.  But since they hadn’t, it had suffered the same malaise as numerous complexes in Indianapolis city limits, where school districts are often much spottier and crime a persistent concern.  What went wrong with Westminster?

Nothing, apparently—I was wrong all this time.  It fell under new ownership last November and promptly underwent a significant renovation.  They’ve already rebranded the place with a new logo.

And it looks like those renovations are substantial—much more than just a slick new sign at the entrance.  Gone is the spraypainted graffiti, the sagging gutters, the termite-infested wood. Here’s what some of the new ones look like:

Notice the newly planted shrubs, and the sapling in the second photo.  Obviously the buildings received a facelift, but were the changes more than superficial?  A glimpse at some of the buildings still under renovation would suggest that the process has been comprehensive.

The new owners, Van Rooy Properties, closed off a number of the buildings, vacating them completely during the renovation process.  Notice that the doorways are completely boarded shut.  The renovation team also hasn’t forgotten about the rights-of-way.

The asphalt appears to be newly resurfaced and striped.  But the best evidence that the Westminster Apartments are enjoying a thorough renovation are the buildings in which the process has not yet begun—some “before” photos.

Unlandscaped, sagging gutters, peeling paint...they look just awful—worse than anything else I’ve seen on the south side of Indianapolis.  And yes, the unrenovated units still reveal those half-hearted attempts to hide the graffiti tags.

The juxtaposition of the pre- and post-renovation Westminster units should provide enough evidence that the buildings were in a sorry state, but, last November, I had my doubts that they would ever undergo a complete renovation.  The fact that Van Rooy has taken such an initiative clearly speaks well for the survivability of Westminster (though, frankly, I’m surprised the owners didn’t alter the name of the units, as frequently happens when apartment buildings change hands).  However, this initiative does not speak well for the future of equivalent rental properties in Indianapolis city limits.  While I am certain that at least some of the 1970s-era units in Indianapolis proper have undergone a renovation, I’m not aware of any in particular on this side of town.  But, just south of County Line Road, these Greenwood apartment units might benefit from enough of a shot in the arm that they once again attract middle-income tenants.  While Westminster may seem like a modest indicator, the fact remains that the property’s owners determined that its location was sufficiently desirable to invest in comprehensive uprgrades—an action I don’t anticipate seeing among Indianapolis apartments on this side of town any time soon.  In fact, the dominant demographic of the suburban-style apartments in Indy’s Perry Township (just a mile or two away from the Westminster) are Burmese immigrants, who depend on rock-bottom leasing rates.

All in all, the Westminster case study suggests that I was wrong: aging apartments in fast-growing suburbs genuinely are more likely to benefit from a renovation, while the counterparts in the primary city continue to languish.  Maybe I can explore this dichotomy again a few years from now, when another apartment complex on each side of the boundary will inevitably deteriorate to a similar condition as the Westminster pre-renovation.  But at this point, it appears that the affordable housing policies that ostensibly discourage apartment owners from renovating buildings in the old central city of a metro—the portion of the metro typically with the weakest school districts—don’t have the same impact on their suburban counterparts.  But, in another 20 years, the Westminster Apartments of Greenwood will inevitably need another renovation in order to remain viable; at that point in the not-so-distant future, shifting suburban fortunes will determine whether or not the buildings get another face-lift. 

Contemporary infill gentrification.

My latest post is at Urban Indy.  It focuses on two small multi-family apartment developments in Fountain Square and Bates-Hendricks, neighborhoods on the near south side of Indianapolis' downtown that, while still very gritty, have become increasingly trendy in recent years.  Both neighborhoods still have their fair share of dilapidated housing and some vacant lots, but that is quickly changing, thanks in no small part to the initiatives of Southeast Neighborhood Development (SEND), the local CDC.

Here is Phase I of the Carburetor Lofts, in Fountain Square, fully leased:

And here is Phase I of the East Street Flats in Bates-Hendricks, nearing completion:


Most of these units are 120% of AMI, which, for an inexpensive city such as Indianapolis, is more or less a steal.  SEND's goal was to meet some untapped demand for sleek modern architecture in neighborhoods that would support them, but would still offer a much lower price point than northside neighborhoods like Herron-Morton (which is also welcoming its share of much, much pricier contemporary infill housing).  The article reviews each apartment building on its own terms, gauging the success of the urban design and likelihood that they will help sustain each neighborhood's growing viability within the demographic that actively seeks urban living.  Comments are welcome, either here or on the Urban Indy webpage; I will do my best to respond.

Salvaging St. Louis, Part III: Biodiversity in repopulation.

In the previous section of this three-part article, I began exploring some of the affordable housing initiatives of St. Louis that have helped it, to some extent, stem its precipitous decline, particularly in comparison to Detroit, its peer city in terms of population loss.  If this survey (you could almost call it “home tour”) seemed a bit facile, well, it is.  To some extent, that’s the point: St. Louis—in contrast with Detroit—has transcended much of its dire population freefall over the years by repopulating its vacant land with sensitively designed affordable and mixed-income housing.  The city is still losing population, but its 8.3% loss from 2000 to 2010 is a pittance compared to the staggering 25% that rocked Detroit during the same time frame.

My home show takes on an even more subjective angle because it has exclusively focused on the portfolio of the St. Louis-based developer, McCormack Baron Salazar, Inc (MBS).  I confess that I received an information packet guiding through different developments within the city limits through MBS’s public relations coordinator.  But this analysis should rise above the level of a promotional campaign for one of the nation’s largest affordable housing developers.  Looking at a particularly successful developer serves as a bellwether for what might prevent other attempts to restore the city’s housing stock from yielding transformative results.

The previous section looked primarily at MBS’s portfolio in the northern half of St. Louis, which has long been the most impoverished part of the city, with some neighborhoods losing over 80% of their population over the years.  The near north side was home to the notorious Pruitt Igoe, 32 high-rise public housing structures whose near immediate failure to accommodate its population safely resulted in its ultimate demolition, a mere 16 years after its completion.  Most of the former site of Pruitt-Igoe remains a vacant, weed-strewn lot.  However, some of McCormack Baron Salazar’s most effective low-income housing efforts sit directly across the street from the old monstrosity, such as the Murphy Park development to the north featured in Part II.

For this section, the housing survey will travel southward, into some of the near- Westside neighborhoods of St. Louis—an area framed by downtown to the east, Forest Park to the west, Delmar Boulevard to the north, and I-44 to the south.  Most of the neighborhoods around here are transitional: some are still in decline, but many have stemmed the population loss and are recovering to form a reasonably racially and economically integrated district, with much of the original building stock still intact.  MBS has contributed several creative projects to this area, and, due to the broader array of incomes represented in the neighborhood, these new developments tend to cater to tenants in multiple economic strata.

The northernmost of the developments featured in Part III, Renaissance Place at Grand Apartments straddles what most would consider the line between the north side of St. Louis and the west side.  Although just barely north of the common divider Delmar Boulevard, the expansive project still sits directly west of the northern edge of downtown.  My apologies once again for some of the lower quality photos—dusk was setting in, and I often did not have the time to get out of the vehicle to take pictures.

After completion in 1968, the Arthur Blumeyer public housing development housed over 1,100 families across four high-rise and 42 low-rise apartment buildings, with an emphasis on support for the elderly.  Though the development lasted considerably longer than Pruitt-Igoe, it fell under the same scrutiny as most other public housing thanks to the Federal Omnibus Consolidated Reconciliation Act of 1996, which mandates that public housing of 300 or more units with a vacancy rate of 10% or higher must undergo routine viability assessments.  According to these housing audits, if the maintenance of the buildings exceeds the cost of vouchers and a revitalization plan will not confidently return them to long-term viability, local housing authorities must remove the structures from the housing supply within five years.

By 1999, most of the housing in Arthur Blumeyer did not pass the test, so St. Louis Housing Authority partnered with MBS to replace the development with Renaissance Place at Grand.  Using $35 million of HUD’s HOPE VI grant funds, the developer created a 512-unit community, which under HOPE VI stipulations must accommodate a mix of income levels while adhering to architectural standards that respect the surroundings.

I’ll confess that I’ve seen HOPE VI developments in other cities that come closer to imitating the existing vernacular; it would be hard for anyone with above-average vision to mistake this for historic St. Louis housing.  (And it doesn’t help that 80% of the trees are barely more than saplings.) Still, the individual buildings orient themselves to the street and recall the brick duplexes still commonplace in other St. Louis neighborhoods.

We’d be hard-pressed to find apartment buildings that look like these in the newer suburbs.  Also noteworthy is the high density of solar panels that line the roofs of many buildings at Renaissance.  The sustainable features and pedestrian scaled design helped the entire project earn a certification from US Green Building Council as a LEED Neighborhood Development (ND) community.

Though only about a mile away from the North St. Louis developments featured in Part II, Renaissance enjoys intrinsic advantages for stretching within walking distance of the Grand Boulevard theater district, a still impoverished but steadily gentrifying area.  Unlike Murphy Park and Brewery Apartments (but comparable to Westminster Place), Renaissance’s proximity to desirable land near Grand Boulevard results in broader appeal for a mixture of incomes and races.  Thus, this development most likely had to dilute some of the distinguishing architecture features to attract a bigger market.

Just a few blocks to the south stands the headquarters of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, in the heart of Grand Center, part of the art and theater district that boasts the Fox Theatre and Powell Hall (home of the St. Louis Symphony) as its hub.  Formerly a Woolworth Building, it sat vacant for many years after the store closed in 1993.

Today, it hosts the well-known nonprofits regional headquarters, with additional space for art studios, offices, and other foundations.  The restored 46,000 square foot Art Deco building (Big Brothers Big Sisters uses half the leasable space) was a milestone for McCormack Baron Salazar, Inc: the firm’s first non-residential development, completed in June 2008, taking advantage of a mixture of new market and historic tax credits.  The area itself, thanks to the abundance of surviving pre-World War II architecture, is re-emerging as an arts and restaurant district, thanks in part to its close proximity to St. Louis University (SLU) to the south.  The photo below shows a pocket park (Strauss Park) at the intersection of Washington Boulevard and North Grand Boulevard, just a block away from the Big Brothers Big Sisters building:

Viewing the park from another angle, the majestic Fox Theatre is patently visible.

Here it is, through a streetscape view standing in front of the old Woolworth.

The cluster of older skyscrapers at this prominent point two miles west of downtown St. Louis asserts its importance as a sub-node, a reviving office and entertainment district comparable to many cities’ Midtowns.

At the same time, the neighborhood of 11,000 poses formidable challenges.  The defining characteristic of the average household is an unmarried woman with children, and barely 20% of adults have at least a high school diploma.  With a population nearly three-quarters African-American, over one-third of these households make less than $10,000 annually.  The remaining 27% of the population consists of a diverse array of relative newcomers: young professionals, college students, some immigrants, artists—virtually all of which have higher incomes than the median and which inevitably have driven the neighborhood’s escalating reputation as a destination for fashionable (and not necessarily low-cost) urban entertainment.  Keeping in mind the polarizing demographic forces operating in Grand Center, the old Woolworth Building seems like a shrewd location for this type of redevelopment: the tenant mix can directly engage with the neighborhood’s neediest residents while fostering a blend of the (clichéd label) “eclectic” that helps sustain the often fragile balance in areas those host a widely mixed array of incomes.  Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, an office/administrative hub for the St. Louis metro and beyond, tries to emphasize inclusivity through partnerships with other neighborhood businesses.  The near-future prospects for Grand Center suggest further gentrification, but this also expedites the end of the segregation and concentration of poverty that characterized the area for decades prior.

Less than a mile from the Big Brothers Big Sisters, and just to the west of SLU’s main campus, sits 6North, a fashionable loft-style building featuring 80 units, with approximately 55% at market rates.

Although the surrounding neighborhood shows clear evidence of gentrification after decades of economic decline over the years, the majority of the building stock remains intact.  At this same intersection of Laclede Avenue and North Sarah Street, only one other corner is vacant.  Here are the structures at the other two corners:

Situated on the site of a former farmer’s market (whose original shell remains), the new construction (completed in 2006) demonstrates a conscious effort to blend with the surrounding vernacular as urban infill.   6 North’s proudest accomplishment (earning it multiple development and design awards) is its incorporation into every unit the fundamentals of universal design, which organizes the space so that virtually any individual can maximize his or her usage of the space, including those with any variety of physical challenges (wheelchairs, blindness, severe arthritis).  With the help of disability advocates at the Starkloff Institute http://starkloff.org/s/ , MBS’ development team devised wider hallways, more accessible light switches, changing floor textures to serve as tactile cues, full-length mirrors, and open space under sinks.  The building includes several work-live units on the ground floor, giving clients the option of a home office.  It also features a community room and fitness center (again applying universal design principles), and ground-floor retail. 

The demand for developments such as 6 North is only like to increase over the next two decades, as throngs of Baby Boomers become septa- and octogenarians.  No doubt many of them will prefer a home environment that allows “aging in place”—reducing the need to move into assisted living facilities later in life.

The final development sits yet further south than its predecessors—the first one south of Interstate 64.  McCormack House at Forest Park Southeast apartments place affordable assisted living all under one roof. 
 

For those who have read Part II, this development might bear more than a passing resemblance to the McCormack House at Westminster Place.  It should.  To the best of my knowledge, it’s more or less identical, thus explaining the shared namesake.  I see no reason to fault standardization—quite naturally it reduces aggregate soft costs in terms of architect’s fees, and it probably cuts on some of the needed civil, mechanical and electrical engineering.  One notable difference between this McCormack House and the one at Westminster is the surrounding environment.  With Westminster Place, the assisted living sat on a primarily residential street, with other McCormack Baron Salazar developments abutting it.  Here, it sits in relative isolation:

The above photo offers a view across the street from Forest Park Southeast.  At the junction of Manchester Avenue and Kingshighway Boulevard, the purlieus are hardly peaceful, and the street widths make them undesirable for pedestrian crossings.  Fortunately a neighborhood of mostly intact housing and improving safety record stretches to the east of this facility.

While this concludes the housing tour, it barely scratches the surface of MBS projects in the St. Louis city limits.  Their website reveals dozens more, ranging from adaptive reuse of historic structures, residential neighborhood construction, schools, shopping plazas, and solar retrofitting.  And, of course, McCormack Baron Salazar, Inc. is just one of many developers aiming to repopulate some of the city’s most devastated neighborhoods through amenity-laden developments that cater to a wide variety of socioeconomic levels.  Some are clearly more successful than others, but compare most of the St. Louis projects with these affordable apartments I encountered in a recent trip to Detroit:

Taken through a raindrop-flecked windshield from a speeding bus, the pictures probably don’t do it justice.  At the same time, they get the point across adequately: the buildings are oriented toward an interior parking lot or surrounded by off-street parking, with a perimeter fence.  They intend to sequester the residents from their surroundings rather than integrate them.  And they look completely indistinguishable from what one would expect to see in the suburbs.

I’m on the verge of creating a strawman here.  It’s completely unfair for me to compare some of the most carefully thought-out housing in St. Louis with some obviously perfunctory developments in Detroit, when I’m sure Detroit has some superior replacement housing, and St. Louis certainly has other sub-par projects.  But the numbers cannot lie: despite six decades of over 60% losses in either city, the decline shows some indication of flatlining in St. Louis, whereas the last 10 years for Detroit were worse than ever.  No doubt a combination of exogenous and endogenous forces have come to shape why it appears Detroit has suffered so much more than St. Louis, and to delve into those would be worthy of yet another blog post that at this point I’m not well-informed enough to generate.

Simply put: empirical evidence supports the numbers.  St. Louis has more effectively fended off the long accumulating stigma of living in the city limits. Even though, as I indicated in my first post in this series, St. Louis had to contend with a housing stock that had fallen more greatly out of favor than Detroit (particularly at the peak of the decline, from 1960 to 1980), it has enjoyed both a greater degree of renovated old housing as well as a replenishment of the supply in nearly depopulated neighborhoods.  More than most major American cities, and certainly more than St. Louis, single-family owner-occupied detached housing dominates Detroit’s supply.  Much of Detroit housing, especially in the northern neighborhoods close to the border at Eight Mile Road, looks like conventional “white picket fence” housing, yet people still abandoned it in droves, more rapidly in the last decade than even the previous lows of the 1970s. Though it may not have reversed the stigma, St. Louis holds greater promise, manifested in part by revitalized neighborhoods on the near south side, as well as the broad array of new construction across much of the previously deserted near north side.

I’ve deliberately suppressed the fundamental claim of this lengthy essay up to this point, though I have clearly hinted at it.  This exploration of St. Louis’ evolving housing stock over the years (with tangential comparative references to Detroit) intends to call into question how much—if at all—shifting consumer tastes for housing have influenced the departure from American cities.  While most older, industrialized cities in the country did begin to lose population in the middle of the 20^th century, some obviously suffered more than others: I have explored two that have endured among the steepest declines.  But not every city has been able to align its housing construction with consumer tastes—tastes that time has proven to be quite persnickety, not just in regards to design/style of housing or the particular neighborhood/district, but the ultra-sensitive interplay between the two.

The truth is, the McCormack Baron Salazar developments featured in this article have, by and large, forged a shrewd compromise in capitalizing on a mostly urban housing typology in parts of the city where demand for housing diminished to virtually nothing.  In order to substantiate this, it’s necessary to briefly revisit a project like Murphy Park from Part II of this essay:

Obviously these buildings bear little relation to the turn-of-the-century brick architecture that survives resplendently throughout St. Louis neighborhoods south of Delmar Avenue.  But it also does not look like a conventional suburban apartment complex in terms of the urban form: buildings front the conventional gridded street with minimal setbacks.  Residents of these areas will still navigate their apartment complex in much the same way they would if this were a historic neighborhood: walking along sidewalks that parallel the streets while crossing at intersections, as opposed to walking through sidewalks in grassy yards to reach large parking lots.  It’s a pedestrian scaled typology in a city that flourished in an area before automobile.

Compare the Murphy Park housing above to the photo below:

With prominent driveways leading to two-car garages, it’s hard to imagine these houses (not by McCormack Baron Salazar) might sit along century-old streets in a St. Louis neighborhood just a mile from downtown.  They look like 1980s suburbia.  But they do sit squarely in St. Louis, just a few blocks away from MBS’s Murphy Park development.  The juxtaposition of these radically different attempts to redevelop housing in depopulated north St. Louis neighborhoods begs the question: which one do people want more?  Obviously any attempt to gauge demand empirically as I have is based purely on speculation, but it’s relatively easy to substantiate it within a larger context.  Truthfully, most of the low income African American families who left north St. Louis pursued the same American Dream as their white counterparts had thirty years prior: they sought larger, detached, flexible suburban housing with garages and bigger yards.  But when a developer tries to replicate that model in the city of St. Louis, replete with its failing schools, strained public services, and lamentably high crime rates, why should families with any wherewithal choose the exact same housing product in the city that they can find easily in the ‘burbs but with much greater piece of mind?  Much of this newish suburban housing in St. Louis seems to be unraveling already:

Meanwhile, Murphy Park remains in impeccable shape.

Again, the comparison here isn’t entirely fair, since I deliberately pinpointed the worst examples of the suburban-style housing (some of it looks fine).  And it is possible that the suburban housing is owner-occupied and heavily subsidized, while Murphy Park is renter-occupied and thus falls under strict property management.  But demand will still drive everything, and it is highly possible that an extremely low-income family may still seek affordable housing with a “traditional” urban form that MBS offers, as long as it provides amenities.  Meanwhile, the market-rate buyers who voluntarily move to the city despite its crime and failing schools will almost definitely seek housing that promotes urbanism and walkability.  Though I don’t see yuppies moving to this side of St. Louis any time soon, they are far more likely to show interest in the market rate portion of an MBS development such as Murphy Park or the meticulously renovated Brewery Apartments—

--than they would for a conventional suburban house like the ones near Murphy Park, which they could easily afford in a suburb with much better schools.

Thus, a savvy developer must know not only when it’s the right time to rebuild in the always-risky depopulating central city, but which neighborhoods/districts are right to build, and which architecture or urban design principles are suitable for that particular neighborhood.  St. Louis’s most promising investments for the short-term may sit in a semicircle shape two miles around the downtown to the north, west, and south.  In the north, the best option is new construction using moderately urban standards but with the contemporary amenities (walk-in closets, ample kitchen/cabinet space, single-tap faucets) that virtually everyone expects these days.  To the west and the south, developers can focus more on strategic infill or restoration, since a considerably greater portion of the original housing stock survives, with a newly invigorated demand for both brick and attached duplexes.

Elsewhere in the St. Louis city limits—outside of that two-mile “fertile crescent”—it may be hard to stimulate much more demand for housing restoration or replenishment, particularly in the north and west.  Many of those neighborhoods are still losing population.  And the demand for the conventional St. Louis brick house does not extend so broadly that new arrivals are willing to try their luck in neighborhoods that hold no prospect for turning trendy in the next decade.

The conventional St. Louis brick house is still a niche product.  The fate of housing in these outlier districts is cloudy: while the city seeks buyers to claim vacant homes at very low costs, quite a few others will face demolition.  Optimally, the City will forge contracts with developers to purchase and rehab a broad swathe of them, based on the instinct that revitalizing an entire district, while evidently costlier and difficult to implement, is far more likely to result in sustained revitalization than merely renovating a single structure in an area otherwise surrounded by blight.

Whatever the Missouri city’s recent successes, neither St. Louis nor Detroit has any room for complacency.  The figureheads behind St. Louis’ revitalization face an uphill battle in the less trendy neighborhoods: what often appear to be solidly built brick homes will nonetheless continue to deteriorate when mothballed, not just due to climatic changes but also negative human intervention.  Many abandoned properties, particularly in the most deserted areas (and, thus, the least supervised), face imminent collapse due to persistent brick theft from scavengers.  Though I have not seen it, the film Brick by Chance and Fortune apparently explores St. Louis’ distinctive brick legacy in greater detail.  Meanwhile, recent Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers incidentally suggest that the metro Detroit economy is faring better than St. Louis for the time being—though a single year’s reports on job growth don’t necessarily indicate much, St. Louis ranked dead last among major metros, according to a recent chart compiled by The Urbanophile.  Metro Detroit fell somewhere more in the middle of the pack.  The essence of urban depopulation (a process decades in the making) is a many-headed hydra, and our learning process is scarcely over, nor, for that matter is the depopulation era over for many, many cities.  Tackling repopulation has proven just as difficult.  The most talented market-rate and affordable developers understand niche sensitivity enough to generate a strong IRR, leaving on the less successful in the housing industry to trot the stale shibboleth “built it and they will come”.  In the wounded American city, it just ain’t that simple.

Again, I would like to thank Heather Milton for her support and input on St. Louis housing.

The right kind of sidewalk clutter.

My latest post--a short one (for me at least)--is now up at Urban Indy.  It focuses on the Mozzo, a newly completed multifamily residential development in the Sacred Heart neighborhood, fronting the increasingly active Virginia Avenue commercial corridor.


By and large it's a satisfactory building, with a massing that befits the old neighborhood just a mile southeast of Indy's Monument Circle.  While in the long run, I wish it had more retail, the fact remains that the density downtown is probably not yet there to support it--several other recently completed developments have also struggled to find first-floor retail tenants.

My focus, however, is on the one 1,700 sf pocket of retail in the corner of the Mozzo's first floor.
 
It does not yet have a tenant, but the promotional screen in the window claims to offer outdoor seating.  After looking around the area, I can only help but ask, "How?"  The sidewalk to the left of the above photo (fronting local road Merrill Street) is conventional width for this neighborhood, and has a big utility pole sticking out of it.  The sidewalk to the right in that photo is the much more generous Cultural Trail, hosting both a pedestrian and bicycle component.  Generous as it may be, the Cultural Trail is not wide in order to host cafe-style seating.  The sign in the window is misleading, and my blog explores the broader implications of what this is saying about private sector perceptions of public space embodied by the Cultural Trail.  Comments as always are welcome.

Putting a gas tank in the heart of a neighborhood.

My latest post is at Urban Indy.  It features the minor controversy regarding a building going through the redevelopment process in one of the city's oldest neighborhoods on the near south side.  The building itself is architecturally unremarkable:

It's not in terribly good shape, and the owner has had little luck finding a buyer who would renovate it.  Chances are the renovation would cost more than the property is worth, especially since the surrounding Sacred Heart neighborhood is only in the earliest stages of revitalization.

But does that mean it should get demo'd to turn into a gas station?  I'm less uncomfortable with the demolition than with the long-term future of the parcel.  Every land speculator in urban areas sees dollar signs when a potential petroleum company comes knocking; even in the most economically distressed areas, they translate to big bucks.  But this neighborhood already has four operating gas stations within a mile radius, with one more on the way, only two blocks south of this current site at Meridian and Morris streets.

The surrounding community is trying to organize to appeal the Hearing Examiner's ruling in favor of demolition, but the challenge lies in constructing a compelling enough argument, especially when the zoning at this parcel is a very unrestrictive C-4.  This tired little blue-collar apartment building may not be a keeper in and of itself, but if offers the walkable urban design that Sacred Heart hopes to retain for itself--and to which a gas station is antithetical.

Feel free to read the full article; comments are always welcome.

Even test-market suburbs get caught in the tidal wave of low-income housing.

With a constantly changing tenancy, it is no surprise that apartment complexes and renter-occupied housing age quickly—usually much faster than owner-occupied housing.  The disparity between these two fundamental housing contracts (renting and owning) owes a great deal to basic human psychology: we are more impelled to take care of property if it belongs to us and we perceive it as an investment.  But does this distinction alone explain why so many rental units from the 1960s and 1970s are in terrible condition, when the owner-occupied housing nearby—dating from the exact same time period—remains for the most part tidy and well-maintained?

The montage below shows the Westminster Apartments in metro Indianapolis, and it won’t take much narrative on my part to get my point across; the photos speak for themselves.  But keep reading anyway, because without the explanatory material I will include, it could easily seem as though I’m exploiting the poverty and substandard living conditions of the residents who still call this complex home.  That obviously isn’t my goal, but it is important to delineate what I have observed.

The architectural style for the Westminster is pretty standard for suburbs of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the mansard roof and garden-level units.  Some landscaping would certainly help the appearance here, though it would also significantly impede sunlight to those garden apartments—an unappealing feature that later generations of apartment designers have conspicuously avoided.  Newer units rarely have garden apartments.

Yellowed newspaper substitutes for curtains in quite a few of the units, and the Venetian blinds are routinely mangled, as evident on the top floor windows.  More often than not, the fencing in the back yards is ready to tip over.

Gutters and various ornamentation on the upper levels is bent and sagging, as obvious on the upper left unit in the photo below:

Just a little bit further in that direction, the same unit has a deck in which the stability of the wooden floor appears significantly compromised, either through termites or simply wood that rots under the deteriorated finish:

None of these defects in isolation may seem like a serious concern, but discriminating buyers (or renters) are going to notice them and, with a wealth of other available apartment options in the area, will look elsewhere.  The result?  The Westminster Apartments cater to those who lack the ability to choose, whether due to lack of income or another limiting condition.  It is no longer a desirable place for middle-income households, and the apartment sags further under the weight of the stigma of being a place for social deviancy—for those who cannot or will not make a respectable living, even if this reputation is undeserved.  By no means am I implying that everyone at Westminster is a criminal, but the empirical evidence suggests that it might have more of a problem with behavior that the middle class generally finds unacceptable.  Take this fence, for example:

The white spray paint conceals was almost undoubtedly another layer of spray paint—an act of graffiti.  And there’s more:

And another subtler example, this time on one of the actual buildings:

(If you can’t see it in the photo above, check the slightly different paint color on the bricks just above the gas main and to the left of all those meters.  This time the property managers chose a more appropriate color of paint to hide the vandalism.)

It’s impossible to know what this graffiti signified, but anyone with a soupcon of urban savvy would infer that it could be a gang tag.  Even if it is nothing more than a budding Matisse testing out his or her incipient talents on the first available canvas, what middle class person is going to take a risk with this complex, when dozens of other complexes in the area don’t show any evidence of graffiti or gang tags?

I covered this topic years ago in one of my first essays, focusing on Berkley Commons, an apartment complex on the south side of Indianapolis.  Like the Westminster, it has shown its age and no longer attracts a middle class clientele.  This high-speed depreciation happens routinely in metropolitan areas large and small: a large proportion of apartments constructed during the Johnson or Nixon administration (or Ford or Carter) have already devolved to low-income housing.  Why?  In the older essay, I referenced how accounting and tax filing standards dictate that the standard depreciation schedules for multifamily apartments is 27.5 years.  These Westminster Apartments clearly outdate this duration, suggesting that, without a significant renovation, the structures would no longer remain in good enough condition to attract anything but renters who cannot afford anything better.  Presumably the cost of living at either Berkley Commons or Westminster is well below the median contract rent for the area, resulting in developments filled almost exclusively with low wage-earning households or those heavily dependent on government aid.

This downward spiral becomes the normal trajectory for apartment complexes in economically integrated municipalities, where the school districts might not boast as good of a reputation as the more homogenous outer suburbs.  Berkley Commons sits in the Indianapolis Metropolitan School District of Perry Township—not a terrible district by any means (certainly a better reputation than Indianapolis Public Schools), but still a middling one compared to the suburbs.  Young families with economic wherewithal would never choose Berkley Commons in Indianapolis, when they can easily find higher quality rental units in suburbs with good schools…or they can procure a mortgage in this persistently affordable metro area.

But there’s a clincher here: Berkley Commons, from the earlier article, might have been in a questionable Indianapolis school district.  The Westminster Apartments, however, are not.  They sit just south of County Line Road, in Greenwood, Indiana, part of a suburban public school system that, while not the best in the state, certainly ranks well above the average and boasts an overall strong reputation.  Greenwood Public Schools have enjoyed consistent growth over the years, while enrollment at Perry Township and Indianapolis Public Schools have flattened or declined.  School districts, in turn, are one of the most influential factors in determining the desirability of a certain area, as well as the cost of housing.  Given the strong reputation of the schools, why would the property managers of Westminster allow it to fall into such disrepair?  It looks as bad, if not worse, than quite a few of the apartments in Indianapolis city limits.  Berkley Commons, though in an inferior district (and thus less likely to command high rents), didn’t have sagging gutters or graffiti tags.  Why don’t the landlords at Westminster use the housing deposits they collect from tenants to keep the units in good running order so that they can continue to attract a wealthier demographic that is able to pay more?

My speculation two years ago was that rental deposits simply don’t cover enough to stave off depreciation.  Sure, they can pay for paint and shampoo for the carpet, but what about new kitchen appliances or bathroom sinks?  What about the fact that modern households tend to prefer expansive “great rooms” with minimal walls, while most old apartments still feature galley kitchens?  The attractiveness of rental housing deteriorates quickly, not just because of wear-and-tear caused by tenants, but the general aging of the entire package renders the unit less desirable as a consumer good.

Even still, Westminster’s management could easily justify shelling out a little more money for heavy renovations every fifteen years, to keep it desirable enough for the market-rate crowd, especially given the quality of schools in Greenwood.  But I suspect that a certain federal program serves quite unintentionally as a disincentive for restoring the apartments to market-rate quality.  The Housing Choice Voucher Program, better known to the public as Section 8, allows qualifying low-income tenants to receive a voucher that gives them a significantly reduced burden in rental payments.  Eligible Section 8 tenants receive the voucher, and after finding a rental unit that accepts Section 8 (meeting certain federal standards), the tenants pay their small share to the landlord, while the federal government covers the rest.  (MassResources provides a more detailed explanation within the context of this particular commonwealth’s laws.)  The program has been tremendously efficient at ensuring that low and moderate-income households can still access housing in areas where the market-rate prices might otherwise prevent it.  It also has proven a goldmine for landlords.  They often love Section 8 because essentially the federal government pays most of the rent, and HUD always pays on time.  The Section 8 contract forges a relationship between the landlord and tenant that rarely requires an eviction.  But it also embeds an excellent justification for the property managers to slack on maintenance and improvements of the facilities.  With Section 8, there’s no need for them to fix the units so that they stay market rate; instead, they can command just as good of rent (often paid more reliably) thanks to the federal government paying the lion’s share.

I’m not going to try to determine if Westminster has turned into a purely Section 8 housing complex, but most visual evidence would suggest it.  Why would market rate tenants want to live not just in an area where potential gangs are staking their territory through graffiti, but these Section 8 neighbors are paying a fraction of the official rent for the same units?  As a result of this unsavory disparity, many of these complexes continue to spiral downward, turning into derelict concentrated slums and potentially scaring away buyers from the heretofore-stable owner-occupied neighborhoods around them.  For all the virtues of Section 8, its tacit deficiencies all too often go ignored.

But there may be hope for Westminster after all: it appears to be undergoing some renovations.

To a certain extent, these improvements weaken my overall argument.  My initial conclusion, when I first discovered this apartment complex (and it showed no sign of renovation plans) was that even the stable, middle class suburbs like Greenwood are not immune to apartment decline.  We’ve come to expect this of older apartments in Indianapolis; after all, the school systems aren’t usually as good, and the pool of low-income students is high enough that Section 8 often seems like the easy solution.  In Indy, formerly stable auto-oriented complexes from the 1960s and 70s have devolved into some of the most impoverished and crime-ridden parts of town.  A few required city interventions because the conditions had gotten so poor; some have been shuttered and bulldozed.

But once I was ready to take photos, I discovered that this suburban complex is undergoing a large enough renovation that several buildings are completely unoccupied for the time being.  Notice the stickers in the windows from the one above.

It is surprising to witness an incremental restoration process, where some buildings remain occupied, while construction material sits outside on pallets, ripe for the pilfering.

If I am in the Indianapolis area within six months to a year, I hope to revisit Westminster to judge the thoroughness of these improvements.  The current owner, Van Rooy Properties, an established management company with a largely market-rate portfolio closer to the urban center, may very well invest enough to revert the units back to a market-rate status.  After all, the complex sits within walking distance of the eternally successful Greenwood Park Mall; location could serve as a major selling point.  Then again, most of the retail jobs at the mall pay moderate wages at best, so it may be advantageous to have affordable housing close by.  And the vast suburb of Greenwood still has enough shiny new complexes that only a complete gutting of the Westminster apartment units could allow them to compete.  It’s highly probable that Van Rooy will reserve at least a portion of the units as affordable, potentially even as Section 8, because of the program’s airtight reliability.  Regardless of the fate of Westminster, it provides solid evidence that apartment complexes are a beacon for decentralization: usually the first housing to decline in safety, they can in turn squander an entire district’s desirability if the management doesn’t implement regular improvements—or if the feds provide enough of an incentive to speed the depreciation along.