Here's Way to Rebuild Your City
Businessmen and city officials work together to spark construction boom
DOWNTOWN ROCHESTER, N. Y., is enjoying a construction boom, with $33 million worth of new buildings recently completed, under construction or in the planning stage. This striking upsurge in building has taken place since the completion two years ago of Midtown Plaza, a $24 million downtown rebuilding project conceived and executed by local businessmen with the help of the city government. The significance of such locally built projects is emphasized by Republican Rep. Frank J. Horton of Rochester:
"This is the most effective urban renewal program because there were no federal funds involved. Private enterprise, in partnership with the local government, without the use of any federal funds, was able to complete an urban renewal project in the heart of the downtown area." His comments are particularly timely because of the growing doubts about how effectively the 15-yearold federal urban renewal program is accomplishing its purpose. These doubts—coupled with increasing instances where downtown areas are being rebuilt with private capital—are causing Congress and others to take a sharply critical look at the Urban Renewal Administration and its current request for $1.4 billion in new spending authority.
Midtown Plaza was conceived in 1956 by the owners of two competing department stores. At that time a federal urban renewal project on the edge of the downtown area—the Baden-Ormond Project—had been under preliminary planning by the city for four years. This project is still not entirely completed. Two years later another federal urban renewal project came under serious consideration by the Rochester city government. Known as the Genesee Crossroads Project, it would clear and redevelop a section of commercial property not far from Midtown Plaza. A federal planning grant was received in 1961, but acquisition of the property prior to clearing is not expected to start until late this year. Officials expect it will take three years more to clear the land and turn it over to a private developer. A motel chain which was interested in building there has given up and put its new unit on the other side of the downtown area.
More speed from private enterprise Though the three projects are not directly comparable because of the smaller size of Midtown Plaza, they give some indication of the greater speed with which private enterprise was able to act at a time when Rochester's central business district was deteriorating so rapidly that property values were seriously endangered. Commenting on the development of the Plaza and its surrounding area, Robert P. Aex, who was city manager of Rochester from 1953 to 1959, says:
"The power and speed of private enterprise have taken hold and there is no doubt but that new construction and modernization are as contagious as is deterioration. "Why are government projects so slow? It takes the bureaucratic wheels a long time to turn but, more important, the dollar incentive that exists in a free enterprise project is lacking. "There are incentives for speed in a private project that are just not there in a federally aided project. When I see private developers hurrying night and day because the cost of borrowed money continues to run, and when I see them with an investment in equipment, I know they have these and other incentives to get things done in a hurry."
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