What RG4N cost us: part one

Now that RG4N has struck out, it’s time to assess the damage. RG4N is interpreting the judge’s decision not to comment on three of their four complaints as evidence that they were valid which is spectacularly delusional. Good show, folks. Thanks to the Chronicle for, even now, supporting RG4N’s desperate attempt to spin this as something other than a complete truth-slap. Hint: it’s not “curious” she didn’t address the “other claims”; it was predicted by a real lawyer quite some time ago.
I’m going to cover this in two or more parts; today’s is just a conservative estimate of the direct and immediate costs and what we might have otherwise done with that time and money.
The city’s legal costs are oft-quoted at $424,000. This is at least the contract with Casey Dobson. I’m going to be extremely conservative and round up the city’s direct costs to $600,000, including other legal costs, the time and money spent responding repeatedly to RG4N’s complaints (and to city council members who were desperately trying to find an angle to work).
Other direct and short-term costs I could have considered, but didn’t:
Lost sales taxes: I’ll be completely conservative and assume that every single dollar of sales tax we don’t get from six months or so of delayed opening would have just been shifted from other Wal-Marts or other stores in the city. I don’t believe this to be the case; if it were that simple, Wal-Mart wouldn’t be so eager to build the store. More likely would be a shifting of the natural coverage area of each store – with stores on the edge of Austin becoming less crowded and hence more attractive to shoppers further out, but this is hypothetical and impossible to measure. Easier to believe but still harder to measure would be the lost tax revenue from other businesses in the center which don’t have easily subsitutable competition – for instance, a delay in the move of the ice rink.
Lost property taxes – despite what you hear from RG4N trolls on the Chronicle’s blog, there is a property tax impact to this development – the land value may increase, or it may not, but I guarantee the structure value will increase dramatically – and the city gets to tax that building value (as does the school district, county, etc.). Impossible to estimate now precisely what that will be, but common sense would tell you that it will be substantial enough to consider as a major benefit of the redevelopment given that the structure value of the existing ghost-mall is measured at just south of 16 million.
Lost bus fares: I’m 1000% positive that the opening of this store will result in a major bump in ridership to and through the Northcross transfer center, which gives Capital Metro more fare revenue with zero extra cost (since they probably wouldn’t increase service until the buses were overflowing, given their past history). But again, hypothetical and impossible to estimate.
So let’s leave the direct and short-term cost at a mere $600,000 (the cost to the taxpayers; RG4N and the careening-towards-bankruptcy Allandale Neighborhood Association have their own set of costs, of course).
What could we have done with that money? Well, me, I’m a transportation guy. So I’ll give you two simple transportation options, and another one dear to my heart. Y’all are welcome to chime in as well.
12,000 linear feet of sidewalk at $50/linear foot. (Estimate obtained from a wide range of sources on the web; corrections welcome). That’s two and a quarter miles of sidewalk, folks, enough to cover a big chunk of the sidewalk gap in the densest parts of Central Austin (where the pedestrians actually are).
Restriping Shoal Creek Boulevard into the safe, sane design that every other city would have done – and in fact, recommended to us. Just read those archives. And the same people who cost us the $600K this time are the ones who cost us the million on SCB in the first place, don’t forget. Parking on both sides instead of just one was just that much more important than cyclist safety.
Operate a branch library for a year. Every time we go through a hiccup in the budget, we have to close libraries or delay their opening. I can’t get a breakdown precisely from the city budget after ten minutes of scrutiny, but I’m betting one of the branches could run for a year on that much money (operating expenses).
So there’s three. Anybody else have any suggestions? Of course, none of these were as important as catering to the tantrum of a bunch of people who just really really really REALLY don’t like Wal-Mart, and want us to engage the Care Bear Stare against the legal system.
Next up: the indirect and long-term costs (such as foregone opportunities to improve the site plan with the supercenter intact).