THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606120001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A19 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT
LENGTH: 166 lines
Perhaps now Norfolk city councilmen no longer will be asked whether the $300 million MacArthur Center will really be built.
Mayor Paul D. Fraim announced last Friday that a group of local banks led by Crestar will provide the $33 million loan to underwrite construction of the superregional mall's Nordstrom-store component. The loan is to be paid back from shopping-center revenue. The city is posting Scope, Chrysler Hall, the new Waterside convention center and the prospective Nordstrom building itself as collateral.
On June 1, City Hall notified renters of parking spaces on the downtown mall acreage that their leases expire June 30.
Demolition by the city of a portion of the Freemason Street municipal garage adjoining the shopping-center site is under way.
Taubman Centers Inc., which owns, leases and manages 19 regional and superregional shopping centers, has been driving test piles for MacArthur Center.
The 70-page Taubman-company annual report contains pictures of the January 1996 MacArthur Center groundbreaking and promises, ``Everything we've learned from our highly successful urban properties in Columbus, Denver, Los Angeles and Stamford will be designed into MacArthur Center to assure that once shoppers visit, `they shall return.' ''
Mayor Fraim explained last Friday why City Hall had opted for a private-sector loan rather than continue talks with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development about a Section 108 loan.
Section 108 loans are awarded to expand economic opportunities for lower-income Americans. Critics charge that HUD loans are ``welfare'' for rich companies. A national TV program was poised to cite any HUD loan to Norfolk for Nordstrom as a questionable use of tax funds.
But Section 108 loans - not the type of loan long sought by Norfolk - have been used in other cities for projects involving Nordstrom. The HUD loan to Norfolk would have required that a specific percentage of Nordstrom employees come from low- and moderate-income families.
The specification was precisely the problem: Nordstrom has a superior record of employing men and women from low- and moderate-income households, and City Council expects a large portion of workers at the mall to be from these groups. But Nordstrom, which hires and trains people-oriented personnel to maintain high levels of customer service, balked at an arrangement that could have invited governmental intrusion into its policies, practices and personnel records. Who could blame it?
Barring the success of legal objections raised by the business group that complains about tax money being used for the public/ private partnership that makes MacArthur Center possible, the mall is on track to open in 1998. The city's acceptance of the bank consortium's loan proposal opens the way to construction.
An upscale retailing complex at the heart of Hampton Roads (pop: 1.6 million) will be the crowning achievement of a half-century of urban-renewal effort.
Norfolk was among the first U.S. cities to embrace the urban-renewal concept, proudly described at the time as essential ``radical surgery'' to save deteriorating cities. The diseased portions of urban centers were to be destroyed with wrecking balls and bulldozers. Safe, clean, sturdy public housing was to be built for slum residents displaced by the assault. Gleaming expressways and boulevards, sparkling commercial structures and cheerful, well-ordered residential neighborhoods were to breathe new life into dying cities.
The enthusiasm of Norfolk's business and professional leadership for radical surgery in the 1950s is understandable. Norfolk's slums were notorious. East Main Street was infamous for its beer joints, tattoo parlors, gaudy entertainment and vice. Commercial Place, where the Norfolk-Portsmouth ferries landed, had become shabbier and emptier over the years.
The reality of urban renewal was never as tidy as the vision.
The bulldozer shoved away historic architecture as well as some neighborhoods that might have been restored in time.
Slum clearance pushed the poor from neighborhood to neighborhood, speeding the decline of marginal sections of cities.
Congress decreed in the '60s that only the poorest of the poor could live in public housing; dumping the worst social, economic and moral ills into inner cities was disastrous for everyone.
Throwaway buildings often were constructed on urban-renewal land, in Norfolk no less than elsewhere.
So ``urban renewal'' fell from grace. Wholesale clearance gave way to conservation districts, preservation and spot demolition to check blight.
But the Norfolk Area Medical Complex thrives on urban-renewal acreage. Norfolk's downtown waterfront has been reincarnated as a wholesome-fun zone on urban-renewal land. New office towers, hotels and housing stand on it.
Norfolk continues to renew itself, strenghtening its economy and generating municipal tax revenue for use throughout the city. Now MacArthur Center is to blossom on the wasteland known for decades as ``the 17 acres.''
At long last. Perhaps now Norfolk city councilmen no longer will be asked whether the $300 million MacArthur Center will really be built.
Mayor Paul D. Fraim announced last Friday that a group of local banks led by Crestar will provide the $33 million loan to underwrite construction of the superregional mall's Nordstrom-store component. The loan is to be paid back from shopping-center revenue. The city is posting Scope, Chrysler Hall, the new Waterside convention center and the prospective Nordstrom building itself as collateral.
On June 1, City Hall notified renters of parking spaces on the downtown mall acreage that their leases expire June 30.
Demolition by the city of a portion of the Freemason Street municipal garage adjoining the shopping-center site is under way.
Taubman Centers Inc., which owns, leases and manages 19 regional and superregional shopping centers, has been driving test piles for MacArthur Center.
The 70-page Taubman-company annual report contains pictures of the January 1996 MacArthur Center groundbreaking and promises, ``Everything we've learned from our highly successful urban properties in Columbus, Denver, Los Angeles and Stamford will be designed into MacArthur Center to assure that once shoppers visit, `they shall return.' ''
Mayor Fraim explained last Friday why City Hall had opted for a private-sector loan rather than continue talks with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development about a Section 108 loan.
Section 108 loans are awarded to expand economic opportunities for lower-income Americans. Critics charge that HUD loans are ``welfare'' for rich companies. A national TV program was poised to cite any HUD loan to Norfolk for Nordstrom as a questionable use of tax funds.
But Section 108 loans - not the type of loan long sought by Norfolk - have been used in other cities for projects involving Nordstrom. The HUD loan to Norfolk would have required that a specific percentage of Nordstrom employees come from low- and moderate-income families.
That specification was not exactly the problem: Nordstrom has a superior record of employing men and women from low- and moderate-income households, and City Council expects a large portion of workers at the mall to be from these groups. But Nordstrom, which hires and trains people-oriented personnel to maintain high levels of customer service, balked at an arrangement that could have invited governmental intrusion into its policies, practices and personnel records. Who could blame it?
Barring the success of legal objections raised by the business group that complains about tax money being used for the public/ private partnership that makes MacArthur Center possible, the mall is on track to open in 1998. The city's acceptance of the bank consortium's loan proposal opens the way to construction.
An upscale retailing complex at the heart of Hampton Roads (population: 1.6 million) will be the crowning achievement of a half-century of urban-renewal efforts.
Norfolk was among the first U.S. cities to embrace the urban-renewal concept, proudly described at the time as essential ``radical surgery'' to save deteriorating cities. The diseased portions of urban centers were to be destroyed with wrecking balls and bulldozers. Safe, clean, sturdy public housing was to be built for slum residents displaced by the assault. Gleaming expressways and boulevards, sparkling commercial structures and cheerful, well-ordered residential neighborhoods were to breathe new life into dying cities.
The enthusiasm of Norfolk's business and professional leadership for radical surgery in the 1950s is understandable. Norfolk's slums were notorious. East Main Street was infamous for its beer joints, tattoo parlors, gaudy entertainment and vice. Commercial Place, where the Norfolk-Portsmouth ferries landed, had become shabbier and emptier over the years.
The reality of urban renewal was never as tidy as the vision.
The bulldozer shoved into oblivion historic structures as well as some neighborhoods that might have been restored in time.
Slum clearance pushed the poor from neighborhood to neighborhood, speeding the decline of marginal sections of cities.
Congress decreed in the '60s that only the poorest of the poor could live in public housing; concentrating the worst social, economic and moral ills in housing parks was disastrous for everyone.
Throwaway buildings often were constructed on urban-renewal land, in Norfolk no less than elsewhere.
So ``urban renewal'' fell from grace. Wholesale clearance gave way to conservation districts, preservation and spot demolition to check blight.
But the Norfolk Area Medical Complex thrives on urban-renewal acreage. Norfolk's downtown waterfront has been reincarnated as a wholesome-fun zone on urban-renewal land. New office towers, hotels and housing stand on it.
Norfolk continues to renew itself, strenghtening its economy and generating municipal tax revenue for use throughout the city. Now MacArthur Center is to blossom on the wasteland known for decades as ``the 17 acres.''
At long last. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page. by CNB