No Parking

Yet another way that regulation chokes Washington: The height restriction on buildings prevents investors (including the city) from realizing the immense market value of public parks.

In Manhattan, where growth is profound, density is high, and regulation is light, the value of properties adjacent to parks have grown at a more rapid clip than comparable properties not adjacent to parks. Parks help property values grow. A good recent study is the Hudson River Park (click through for a PDF for analysis). But look also at the recently restored Bryant Park—where adjacent office properties are substantially higher than throughout the rest of midtown Manhattan.

David Alpert complains that in the absence of regulation to require them to do so, developers in the (monstrously named) NoMa neighborhood have no incentive to build amenities like parks. His argument concedes the point that parks are not valuable, worthwhile investments for the developers. Ryan Avent gets hung up on the point about amenities being a virtue for virtue's sake. He says that amenities are not the same as public goods and that if parks were so valuable, private actors would build parks.

But in the case of NoMa, the city missed an investment opportunity. Zoning and investing in a park is a risk that could have paid out in the form of higher property taxes for properties adjacent to the park. There's no incentive for the city to subsidize higher property values near the park, but if a park spurs development and draws people who then pay sales taxes at the soulless NoMa shopping district near the NewYoFlo Metro station, then there is a way to value that investment. The park's maintenance should be paid for by a Garden Improvement District comprising those properties who benefit from the park.

Now, it may be the case that the District's artificially sparse urban corridors do not in fact give rise to parks that increase the value of their neighbors. Or perhaps the return on investment in parks is low compared to that seen in other cities, including Brooklyn (Prospect Park), Portland (McCall Park), Minneapolis (Loring Park), San Antonio (the River Walk) and other cities. It would be a risk for D.C.

Fortunately, parks are mistakes that are easily corrected. Were the District to invest in some parcel in NoMa and adjacent property taxes did not rise to cover the costs for creating the park, then the District could simply auction the land. This might be a wise idea even in the face of success: In 1993, when the city government put 22 public-park/community-garden properties in the rising Loisaida/Alphabet City neighborhood up for sale, the Trust for Public Land purchased them. The city won coming and going.