“In a great part of the world”

During a presentation on "attracting quality development on the I-35 corridor," the outfit the city has contracted with to attract that development told the City Council Tuesday evening that they had attended a shopping center convention and that they were "tracking 54 retail prospects."

Which, I guess, means "quality," like "beauty," is in the eye of the beholder.

But just when I thought that all anyone was after was more minimum wage jobs, Mayor Todd Webster asked the representative at the podium, whose name escaped me, "I want great, but can wanting great get in the way of good or anything at all?"

The representative replied: "Most of the owners of these properties don’t see themselves as developers. They see themselves as value-add sellers. But they don’t really know what ‘value-add’ means. They’re getting hit by single-use. This is common. This is all over the state. They’re getting hit by single use proposals or a single project, whether it’s a retail center or a multi-family project or a commercial or industrial project. And all of the decisions being made typically by that seller or by that partner/developer and ultimately by the city is around that single use. It’s almost always done in isolation. Very rarely is there a question about what are the adjacencies, what are the synergies, what are the common infrastructure and resource questions that cross the property lines. If those were at least framed in a more common way then the land use decisions would have a different value consideration in terms of your question about ‘good’ or ‘great’.

"You’re in a great part of the world as far as I’m concerned. Everything that’s on all the major highway corridors in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, wherever needs to be great. That doesn’t mean that it’s not affordable. That doesn’t mean that you’re not delivering projects with rents in accessible retail and a range of housing types or a range of commercial types. But the areas in which any of those single uses are implemented that overall area should be great and you should be making decisions about any particular project on whether it’s great, not just good."

In other words, Kyle should be thinking along these lines and this, and not just this or this  Only time will tell if the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission and ultimately, the City Council changes its tune and follows this advice. I’m not holding my breath.