I am opposed to a moratorium on first floor residential housing in our downtown, and that would include a moratorium of any length. I think it’s clear, though, if one considers the arguments in favor of a moratorium, that different advocates have had different goals in mind. Some want a moratorium to give time to decide what policy to advocate for the downtown. This is something like ‘planning to decide,’ if not ‘planning to compete.’
I don’t think that an open market for all this space, for any legal use, is what many here have in mind. It’s what I have in mind.
A second group favored, and I think some might still favor, a longer moratorium not to draft a plan, but to engineer a result. They want some businesses in, some businesses excluded from competition, to produce the sort of downtown they think would be better for the community.
At the Planning Commission meeting in early January, I think that it’s clear that many advocates of a moratorium wanted the moratorium to engineer a result. That’s one of the reasons that advocates of a moratorium in that meeting wanted a long moratorium. If engineering an outcome, and excluding some uses and attracting others, is what advocates of a moratorium want, it will take a long time. If that sort of managed, determined goal is what advocates want, it will take years. It makes sense, based on their goal, for them to ask for a multi-year moratorium.
In fact, I think it will take them longer than two years — it will prove to be a never-ending processes of seeking, finding, losing, and seeking again the mix that they want. A single recession will make the two year moratorium seem far too short for those who want a given outcome, and they will need more time to compensate for unforeseen circumstances. They’ll have a current level of vacancies to fill, new or unexpected vacancies, and the goal to find only their preferred businesses, and not others, under those circumstances.
That’s not two years — that’s ongoing. Two years might as easily be twenty.
Current vacancies, and the difficulty filling them, suggests that engineering a result in the downtown will be harder, not easier.
The second group advocates a moratorium only to propose guidelines. (I think that these guidelines will likely turn out to be a long moratorium, by the way.) Still, it’s a different stated justification for a moratorium.
I would neither ban some uses, nor prevent a private group from trying to attract others. What I oppose is a private group seeking public prohibition to make its recruiting efforts easier. The private group speaks for many, but not all; I would not favor them through a modified ordinance, public moratorium, etc. They can recruit as they do now, and I would not alter the existing conditional use policy by imposing a categorical moratorium.
Their preferred, favored businesses may not be arriving as they’d like, but I would not alter the ordinances of this city to make their preferences easier by excluding other commercial uses through a moratorium.