This is pretty damning point.
•Approximately 70% of an independent’s revenue stays in the city vs. 15% of a chain’s revenue.
But is it true?
It sounds outrageous to me, but every statistic has an origin. So I examined the reports put forth by the SupportNBPT group.
Frankly, I didn't see the connection between other reports and our situation in Newburyport. I did, however, find some other reports that might have been worth citing. I'll get into those in a later post.
As for the two put forth by the SupportNBPT group, the far more comprehensive is the “Fiscal Impact Analysis of Residential and Nonresidential Land Use Prototypes” prepared by Tischler & Associates Inc. for the town of Barnstable.
Excellent analysis of the municipal costs associated with the various types of housing and commercial enterprises. Please check it out. (It’s 22 pages but worth a look particularly the graph on page 17.) The report concludes that of all commercial development types examined-- Business Park, Office, Shopping Center, Big Box, Specialty Retail, Hotel, Restaurant, Fast Food—that specialty retail is by far the most beneficial to a community.
The idea being the infrastructure costs associated with Business Parks, Big Box stores, etc. offset the tax revenue gains. (Hotel use, incidentally, appears to be a wash. Something to keep in mind when we're building on the Waterfront.)
I agree with this concept 100%.
But what I don’t see is the problem. We have specialty retail downtown, and we’ll continue to have specialty retail even after Karp builds what he’s going to build (if he ever builds it.) The report—as far as I can tell—doesn’t differentiate between locally owned specialty retail or small specialty retail chain stores. It merely identifies specialty retail as the most beneficial use.
I can understand this point. But we're not considering a big box store downtown. We're talking about ownership, and I can’t see that mentioned in this report.
Everyone should read this report to better understand the impact that the Little River project in Newbury might have on our area. In my eyes, that's a bigger threat to our downtown shops than any moderately sized chain store along state street would be.
Next: The Mid-Coast Maine Report
5 comments:
RE: "Little River" in Newbury I think it would add to NBPT also with more residents on Rt 1 and support for NBPT businesses around the traffic circle.Maybe the new residential nearby would mean less demand to build in NBPT itself. Also isn't there planning to have more apartments and commercial on the NBPT side too by the train station?
Well, there's talk of a supermarket, which normally includes a pharmacy and a liquor store. This will directly compete with CVS on Pond St, New England wine and spirit and Port Plaza. Why should we give away our water & sewer capacity to add to Newbury's tax base at the expense of our existing businesses ?
Wouldn't we sell the water for a profit potentially in addition to some 'improvements' we could negotiate with the developer -like a CPA fund contribution? And by the way we are being charged more for our water this year because we are using less than the the amount needed to support the plant.
Business competition with our NBPT stores is a good point to consider. What's in the best overall good of the city?
Interesting article in the Current. The city is running pretty close to capacity. With some tweaks we could get more.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/newburyport/homepage/x1091753652
But the question about providing water to the Newbury project is a good one.
We don't currently sell our W&S services for a profit - though we do charge Newbury (olde town and PI) a slightly higher rate. I also disagree with your notion that we use less water than needed to support the plant. Our fixed costs are paid for by usage, if that goes down the rate goes up. As Tom pointed out, we are close to capacity.
Allowing Newbury to go forward could prevent us from building out our side of the traffic circle and creating corporate offices in the industrial park - which would add to our tax base. Then there's waterfront west and east to consider.
I'm in favor of smart growth and little river in concept - but Newbury needs to give us more than proposed to date. They were supposed to give us water rights as part of the PI project and then refused at the last minute.
Consider this, what if you reversed the deal ? We give Newbury a one time payment equal to what the developer is giving us, plus any incremental W&S profit received from the new buildings. In exchange, Newbury would move the municipal boundary such that the parcel is now part of Newburyport and we get to add it to our tax base. We would also get the $300K+ 40-S money from the state and a senior center. You think they would go for that ? Not in a million years....that's the sign of a bad deal...
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