Lakewood Sacrifices Future Economic Development for Residential
Guest post from Alex
“The general formula is that it costs more to provide services to residential… Than [they] bring in tax revenue.” (15th of May, 2017, Mr. Tim Cox, former city attorney for Lakewood).
(15th of May, 2017, Mr. Tim Cox, City of Lakewood meeting)
Although Lakewood should know this basic planning fact, the city continues to replace commercially zoned properties with high-density residential development.
The current administration is continuing down the route of seemingly intentional avoidance of doing real economic development. Real is the key here, since, to Lakewood “economic development” seems to mean car washes, pot shops, failing retail, and storage units.
Not world-class companies and world-class education opportunities to ensure a supply of highly-skilled workers who would then have much better economic opportunities available to them within the community.
Lakewood does not even bother to enforce the spirit of mixed use development.
City administration has been doubling down on high-priced rentals and metro districts, while claiming “affordability” and that this, somehow, replaces actual economic development. Perhaps, they missed the recent story about a price fixing scheme by a company which advises the corporate rental owners (think, large scale apartments, such as the ones been built in Lakewood, instead of “middle” housing):
It is as if those talking about “affordability” actually want to ensure that more people are locked into perpetual financial servitude, instead of working on bringing in local, well-paying jobs into the city.
More often, than not, Lakewood makes it in the news for these types of stories:
Unsurprisingly, some of the Lakewood City Council and city staff are failing to understand (or intentionally avoid?) the link between the failure in economic development and the unfortunate consequences this leads to when it comes to the increase in crime. A “rising tide lifts all the boats” indeed and if the city had a robust economic engine (which it does not), other economic opportunities would follow.
Lakewood Continues to Setup for Economic Failure
Residential properties, generally, are a net negative to the municipality as they cost more to provide services to, while not bringing enough revenue in to cover those costs. Furthermore, Lakewood has completely failed to properly scale up and maintain the needed infrastructure and amenities (such as parks, grocery stores, public spaces and playgrounds, collocated with the high density developments). Nor are there well-paying employment opportunities within walking distance.
By “well-paying employment opportunities”, we mean:
Not another car wash, storage unit, or a quick food joint.
So as Lakewood doubles down on destroying the commercial potential of the city and adding bedrooms which will likely cause more expense to the city, we just ask ourselves if the city administration and planning staff understand the importance of maintaining a balance between residential and commercial development.
Tags: apartment, economic development, Lakewood, rentals
Lakewood Budget Board Recommends Keeping Future TABOR Refunds – Lakewood Informer
[…] Overall expenditures and revenues from the General and TABOR funds were presented at the March 16 Budget Board meeting. As of the June 6 meeting, the day the decision was made by the Budget Board, no critical program was identified as needing additional funds only available through TABOR retention. Instead, overall levels of city spending have grown, and funding for all departments will need reduced proportionately if the city must operate within the General Fund budget. The General Fund is strained because Lakewood’s residential population has grown, requiring increased services, while economic development has not grown, resulting in fewer sales taxes. Lakewood’s mixed-use zoning has exacerbated that problem by replacing commercial buildings with residential. […]