My response to Pat Whalen’s view as bulleted comments:
 
WHALEN: 1) PARC says the land price is too high.

•See my comments under  “3)” below. The various deals are very complicated, but I compared other downtown properties and can’t find anything else selling for more than $1 million per acre. The price the city has contracted is for several million/acre.
 
 
WHALEN:... We had always taken the position we didn’t want to sell the property, we preferred to keep it and lease it so Julian Price’s heirs (the property owners) would have long-term income.

• Julian Price was a wonderful philanthropist, but that has nothing to do with this project. And what a property owner would prefer to do has no bearing. If you don’t want to sell, don’t sell.

  
WHALEN: (Stage 1) through (Stage 4) the current contract for purchase which PIP has honored and allowed extensions on now for 2 ½ years.

• During this two-and-one-half years, PIP has been collecting $200,000 per year in parking fees (as stated by Whalen). These years have been brutal for property sellers, it isn’t as if they had a line out the door offering competing bids. In my view they did not “allow extensions” ... they sought and obtained extensions in order to close a deal at a price the current market would not support.

 
WHALEN: 2) No one is making anywhere near the “profit” PARC suggests because, unfortunately, tax values don’t have anything to do with what we (or our HDK neighbors)actually had to pay to buy, finance, and pay carrying costs on the properties over the years since acquisition.

• Either the valuation is accurate, or the county valuation system is broken, or PIP paid too much. What’s the point?

 
WHALEN: 3) PIP is not retaining “all the valuable frontage on Biltmore Avenue.”

•PARC has issued a correction on that statement.

WHALEN: ... We assume PARC got its $1 million valuation for these parcels from Cecil Bothwell’s guest editorial in Mountain Xpress back in September. So we’ll be glad to make them the same promise we made to Cecil in our reply article. We’ll be glad to sell those outparcels to PARC for 2/3 of that price if they’ll make the same promise we did, to use it to build workforce housing.

• I calculated the approximate $1 million value based on exactly the property PIP will retain (although I didn’t then know that they were retaining air rights above HDK, which means they retain more value). To make my calculation I used the square-foot price the City has agreed to pay PIP and multiplied it by the square feet they are retaining. So if the parcels they retain are not worth $1,000,000, the property we are purchasing is not worth the price. They can’t have it both ways.

• Furthermore, PIP has “proposed” to build work-force housing. there is no contract. In addition, there is no city policy concerning subsidy of “work-force” housing, so bringing this up is irrelevant to the real estate deal at hand.

 
WHALEN: 4) Cascade Mountain is making a little over a 5% return based on what they paid for the Hot Dog King property after holding it for approximately 4 years while the City and the hotel developer went through the arduous process of obtaining project approvals and financing.

• I’d ask, “As versus what they could have lost if they put it on the market today?” Commercial property prices have flattened or fallen. So this deal has basically indemnified Cascade Mountain against riding the recession down and provided a small profit.

 
WHALEN: 5) The hotel developer is paying all the structural costs of beefing up the garage to hold the hotel and if there were no hotel the City would have had to spend substantial additional public monies building its own liner building on Biltmore Avenue as required by the City’s own ordinances.

• That’s true, but then the City would then own the buildings in question and collect rent. One of the hidden twists in this deal is that PIP has arranged to keep the air rights to the property the City is purchasing, and is then selling them separately to Mckibbon (and perhaps others). so we are paying a premium price on land and not even obtaining the air rights. (Incidentally, the original version of the current contract, written in 2008 stated that PIP was conveying the air rights to the City. When and how that changed, I don’t know.) Rent from the “liner” buildings will go to McKibbon (or PIP?)

 
WHALEN: 6) PIP has saved the City substantially more than the purchase price for PIP’s property by: restructuring the deal numerous times to accommodate the City, obtaining rights to the Hot Dog King property, and patiently waiting through all the delays thereby allowing the City to take advantage of huge, economy-related construction cost savings.

• This reminds me of a “BEST BUY” ad that tells you you are “saving” 30 percent on a wide-screen TV that they had previously marked up 80 percent.

 
WHALEN: 7) Public Interest Project’s is not getting any cash from the transaction. The net cash generated will be used by Julian Price’s heirs to retire the debt incurred paying Julian Price’s estate taxes because all his assets were tied up in its downtown revitalization efforts over the last 20 years. Julian’s heirs won’t be getting any cash either.

• It is not the obligation of Asheville tax payers to pay anyone’s estate taxes. If PIP is passing the money to the heirs per some financial arrangement, well, so what? That doesn’t necessarily make the deal any better for the City.

 
WHALEN: 8) ... This number of spaces, although much less than recent City parking studies have shown this area needs, represents a long-promised and patiently-awaited big step towards solving this area’s parking problem .

• The “recent” parking study was done pre-recession, by Kimly-Horn, the company contracted to design and manage construction of the parking deck. (notice any conflict of interest here?) The Kimly-Horn analyst told Council in December that he had not considered any alternatives (shuttle, trolley, other parking areas), had not studied any cities that have successfully utilized shuttles or trolleys, that his entire analysis amounted to counting residential and commercial units and multiplying, then subtracting, based on some sort of formula. This is like asking a hammer if you need more nails.

 
WHALEN: 9) In Mountain Xpress’s “Best of” issue for 2010 the No. 1 complaint about downtown was, “needs more parking”.

• Poll results in “BEST OF” are not remotely a “public opinion survey.” It is a self-selected group of voters, with no numerical or percentage results.

 
WHALEN: 10) Parking garages pay for themselves over time then become revenue streams for the City, just as PARC points out the other garages have done. Unfortunately neither transit nor sidewalks generate revenue so banks won’t loan money for them. The City can choose to use the parking and tax revenues generated by the hotel and the garage to subsidize transit and sidewalks without needing to raise overall tax rates. However, study after study has shown that biggest contributor to cost-effective transit and cost-effective infrastructure improvements(like sidewalks) is DENSITY. And the 51 Biltmore Project is clearly a great alternative to suburban sprawl, more highway motels, and more acres of suburban parking.

• This point is Swiss cheesey, it is so full of holes. Yes, parking decks generate revenue, but a deck this expensive will not come close to paying for itself for 35 years or more. Paying off the $14.8 million loan will take ALL of our parking deck, parking meter and parking fine money for the first ten years, and a declining percentage for another fifteen years. (that’s from all decks including this one).

• That $1 million per year could be used to build sidewalks or improve transit. (our parking money is earmarked for transit/parking/pedestrian/bike projects - so it does not go into general revenue). A trolley system would demonstrably generate revenue as they do in many other modern cities, also drawing tourists, making the whole downtown accessible—and you can borrow money for trolley systems.

• As for the “density” claim ... the kind of density that encourages transit is housing density, not parking density, not hotel and retail density. We need people living along transit lines to help them pay for themselves and justify more frequent service. The “proposed” work-force housing, if it were ever built, would increase residential density downtown, but as stated above it is not part of this deal.

 
WHALEN: 11) The PARC broadside takes a very dismissive attitude toward tourists. (etc.)

• Tourist cities around the country generate more shopping dollars with shuttles and trolleys than with parking. this is a bogus argument.

 
WHALEN: 12) PARC: “The least environmentally friendly way to spend this money is on bringing more automobiles into the city. Adding more cars downtown just adds pollution, noise, and gridlock. Spending this money on parking is the worst choice for our environment.”

• This is exactly accurate. If we invest more money in parking instead of a shuttle we make it harder to come downtown without a car, instead of making it easier for tourists, shoppers and workers to get around downtown. We would be raising Asheville’s carbon footprint instead of working to reduce it.

• We have lots of parking available around town: adjacent to the tunnel, at Westgate, in the River District, and best of all ... at Mccormick field just a few blocks from downtown, hundreds of spaces that are vacant most of the time. A couple of shuttle buses could make any perceived parking shortage disappear in a heartbeat. and note that tens of thousands of people manage to park near downtown for the holiday parade and fireworks displays. Somehow, people are already discovering that there is not a meaningful shortage if they are interested in getting somewhere.

(For that matter, at a fraction of the cost, we could buy the former used car lot on Patton, use it for surface parking for a few years, and consider our options as we see how shuttle use, gas prices, etc., affect local traffic patterns.)

 
WHALEN: Actually the worst choice for our environment is failing to add downtown parking. Density encourages walking. Visitors to downtown park and walk. (etc.)

• According to Kimly-Horn, their “model” shopper is unwilling to walk more than half a block. (Some might say we are looking at a walking problem, not a parking problem.) But if they are correct, then a shuttle makes a lot more sense than another central garage, if the intent is to help businesses city-wide.

• According to the smart-growth books I’ve been reading since taking office, in cities where parking is priced accurately, private companies build decks when there is a demonstrable need. The idea that the city should be the parking provider dates back to a time when downtown was dead and we were desperate to get shoppers into town. To the extent that there is an occasional apparent shortage of parking, it is because of our success. If we raised parking rates to make them comparable to other tourist towns, private companies would find it worthwhile to provide parking.

-Cecil Bothwell
Asheville City Council

Wow, Mr. Whalen and Mr. Bothwell have both succeeded in convincing me - well done, gentlemen! But this and other downtown development issues are key to the future of our city. The action we take will impact Asheville for decades, long after any of us are still here, so let’s try and get it right. Oh, and I like that Cecil points out the non-scientific structure of the Best of WNC poll - and that from a guy who won;)

My response to Pat Whalen’s view as bulleted comments:
 
WHALEN: 1) PARC says the land price is too high.

•See my comments under  “3)” below. The various deals are very complicated, but I compared other downtown properties and can’t find anything else selling for more than $1 million per acre. The price the city has contracted is for several million/acre.
 
 
WHALEN:... We had always taken the position we didn’t want to sell the property, we preferred to keep it and lease it so Julian Price’s heirs (the property owners) would have long-term income.

• Julian Price was a wonderful philanthropist, but that has nothing to do with this project. And what a property owner would prefer to do has no bearing. If you don’t want to sell, don’t sell.

  
WHALEN: (Stage 1) through (Stage 4) the current contract for purchase which PIP has honored and allowed extensions on now for 2 ½ years.

• During this two-and-one-half years, PIP has been collecting $200,000 per year in parking fees (as stated by Whalen). These years have been brutal for property sellers, it isn’t as if they had a line out the door offering competing bids. In my view they did not “allow extensions” ... they sought and obtained extensions in order to close a deal at a price the current market would not support.

 
WHALEN: 2) No one is making anywhere near the “profit” PARC suggests because, unfortunately, tax values don’t have anything to do with what we (or our HDK neighbors)actually had to pay to buy, finance, and pay carrying costs on the properties over the years since acquisition.

• Either the valuation is accurate, or the county valuation system is broken, or PIP paid too much. What’s the point?

 
WHALEN: 3) PIP is not retaining “all the valuable frontage on Biltmore Avenue.”

•PARC has issued a correction on that statement.

WHALEN: ... We assume PARC got its $1 million valuation for these parcels from Cecil Bothwell’s guest editorial in Mountain Xpress back in September. So we’ll be glad to make them the same promise we made to Cecil in our reply article. We’ll be glad to sell those outparcels to PARC for 2/3 of that price if they’ll make the same promise we did, to use it to build workforce housing.

• I calculated the approximate $1 million value based on exactly the property PIP will retain (although I didn’t then know that they were retaining air rights above HDK, which means they retain more value). To make my calculation I used the square-foot price the City has agreed to pay PIP and multiplied it by the square feet they are retaining. So if the parcels they retain are not worth $1,000,000, the property we are purchasing is not worth the price. They can’t have it both ways.

• Furthermore, PIP has “proposed” to build work-force housing. there is no contract. In addition, there is no city policy concerning subsidy of “work-force” housing, so bringing this up is irrelevant to the real estate deal at hand.

 
WHALEN: 4) Cascade Mountain is making a little over a 5% return based on what they paid for the Hot Dog King property after holding it for approximately 4 years while the City and the hotel developer went through the arduous process of obtaining project approvals and financing.

• I’d ask, “As versus what they could have lost if they put it on the market today?” Commercial property prices have flattened or fallen. So this deal has basically indemnified Cascade Mountain against riding the recession down and provided a small profit.

 
WHALEN: 5) The hotel developer is paying all the structural costs of beefing up the garage to hold the hotel and if there were no hotel the City would have had to spend substantial additional public monies building its own liner building on Biltmore Avenue as required by the City’s own ordinances.

• That’s true, but then the City would then own the buildings in question and collect rent. One of the hidden twists in this deal is that PIP has arranged to keep the air rights to the property the City is purchasing, and is then selling them separately to Mckibbon (and perhaps others). so we are paying a premium price on land and not even obtaining the air rights. (Incidentally, the original version of the current contract, written in 2008 stated that PIP was conveying the air rights to the City. When and how that changed, I don’t know.) Rent from the “liner” buildings will go to McKibbon (or PIP?)

 
WHALEN: 6) PIP has saved the City substantially more than the purchase price for PIP’s property by: restructuring the deal numerous times to accommodate the City, obtaining rights to the Hot Dog King property, and patiently waiting through all the delays thereby allowing the City to take advantage of huge, economy-related construction cost savings.

• This reminds me of a “BEST BUY” ad that tells you you are “saving” 30 percent on a wide-screen TV that they had previously marked up 80 percent.

 
WHALEN: 7) Public Interest Project’s is not getting any cash from the transaction. The net cash generated will be used by Julian Price’s heirs to retire the debt incurred paying Julian Price’s estate taxes because all his assets were tied up in its downtown revitalization efforts over the last 20 years. Julian’s heirs won’t be getting any cash either.

• It is not the obligation of Asheville tax payers to pay anyone’s estate taxes. If PIP is passing the money to the heirs per some financial arrangement, well, so what? That doesn’t necessarily make the deal any better for the City.

 
WHALEN: 8) ... This number of spaces, although much less than recent City parking studies have shown this area needs, represents a long-promised and patiently-awaited big step towards solving this area’s parking problem .

• The “recent” parking study was done pre-recession, by Kimly-Horn, the company contracted to design and manage construction of the parking deck. (notice any conflict of interest here?) The Kimly-Horn analyst told Council in December that he had not considered any alternatives (shuttle, trolley, other parking areas), had not studied any cities that have successfully utilized shuttles or trolleys, that his entire analysis amounted to counting residential and commercial units and multiplying, then subtracting, based on some sort of formula. This is like asking a hammer if you need more nails.

 
WHALEN: 9) In Mountain Xpress’s “Best of” issue for 2010 the No. 1 complaint about downtown was, “needs more parking”.

• Poll results in “BEST OF” are not remotely a “public opinion survey.” It is a self-selected group of voters, with no numerical or percentage results.

 
WHALEN: 10) Parking garages pay for themselves over time then become revenue streams for the City, just as PARC points out the other garages have done. Unfortunately neither transit nor sidewalks generate revenue so banks won’t loan money for them. The City can choose to use the parking and tax revenues generated by the hotel and the garage to subsidize transit and sidewalks without needing to raise overall tax rates. However, study after study has shown that biggest contributor to cost-effective transit and cost-effective infrastructure improvements(like sidewalks) is DENSITY. And the 51 Biltmore Project is clearly a great alternative to suburban sprawl, more highway motels, and more acres of suburban parking.

• This point is Swiss cheesey, it is so full of holes. Yes, parking decks generate revenue, but a deck this expensive will not come close to paying for itself for 35 years or more. Paying off the $14.8 million loan will take ALL of our parking deck, parking meter and parking fine money for the first ten years, and a declining percentage for another fifteen years. (that’s from all decks including this one).

• That $1 million per year could be used to build sidewalks or improve transit. (our parking money is earmarked for transit/parking/pedestrian/bike projects - so it does not go into general revenue). A trolley system would demonstrably generate revenue as they do in many other modern cities, also drawing tourists, making the whole downtown accessible—and you can borrow money for trolley systems.

• As for the “density” claim ... the kind of density that encourages transit is housing density, not parking density, not hotel and retail density. We need people living along transit lines to help them pay for themselves and justify more frequent service. The “proposed” work-force housing, if it were ever built, would increase residential density downtown, but as stated above it is not part of this deal.

 
WHALEN: 11) The PARC broadside takes a very dismissive attitude toward tourists. (etc.)

• Tourist cities around the country generate more shopping dollars with shuttles and trolleys than with parking. this is a bogus argument.

 
WHALEN: 12) PARC: “The least environmentally friendly way to spend this money is on bringing more automobiles into the city. Adding more cars downtown just adds pollution, noise, and gridlock. Spending this money on parking is the worst choice for our environment.”

• This is exactly accurate. If we invest more money in parking instead of a shuttle we make it harder to come downtown without a car, instead of making it easier for tourists, shoppers and workers to get around downtown. We would be raising Asheville’s carbon footprint instead of working to reduce it.

• We have lots of parking available around town: adjacent to the tunnel, at Westgate, in the River District, and best of all ... at Mccormick field just a few blocks from downtown, hundreds of spaces that are vacant most of the time. A couple of shuttle buses could make any perceived parking shortage disappear in a heartbeat. and note that tens of thousands of people manage to park near downtown for the holiday parade and fireworks displays. Somehow, people are already discovering that there is not a meaningful shortage if they are interested in getting somewhere.

(For that matter, at a fraction of the cost, we could buy the former used car lot on Patton, use it for surface parking for a few years, and consider our options as we see how shuttle use, gas prices, etc., affect local traffic patterns.)

 
WHALEN: Actually the worst choice for our environment is failing to add downtown parking. Density encourages walking. Visitors to downtown park and walk. (etc.)

• According to Kimly-Horn, their “model” shopper is unwilling to walk more than half a block. (Some might say we are looking at a walking problem, not a parking problem.) But if they are correct, then a shuttle makes a lot more sense than another central garage, if the intent is to help businesses city-wide.

• According to the smart-growth books I’ve been reading since taking office, in cities where parking is priced accurately, private companies build decks when there is a demonstrable need. The idea that the city should be the parking provider dates back to a time when downtown was dead and we were desperate to get shoppers into town. To the extent that there is an occasional apparent shortage of parking, it is because of our success. If we raised parking rates to make them comparable to other tourist towns, private companies would find it worthwhile to provide parking.

-Cecil Bothwell
Asheville City Council