Month: September 2019

In my last post, I casually suggested that the Town spend about $1M of your tax dollars to create a third-of-an-acre park as part of the new Patrick Henry library.  And with that proposal, they would create a low-rise, low-key, light-and-airy library structure, instead of squashing the new library beneath a lot-filling parking garage.  But they’d end up with less total parking available.

While it may be fun to spend somebody else’s money, at some point, you have to ask about value.  Is it really worth it to spend that much money, voluntarily, just to have a “prettier” library site that includes a small park?

The answer to that is obviously a matter of opinion.  I.e., there is no one way to answer that question.

But I can make a comparison to another voluntary expenditure that probably is going to be made, solely to “pretty up” that location:  Burying the power lines.  It’s Town policy to get the power lines buried along Maple.  Presumably, that’s going to be part of this redevelopment.

In this brief post, I’m just going to point out that burying the power lines, at both edges of the Patrick Henry site, will almost certainly cost more than my $1M “Library Park” proposal.  Best guess, it will cost in excess of $1.2M, possibly substantially in excess of that.

So one way to look at the value question is by comparison to that.  If you only had $1M to spend, and could either bury the power lines or buy the “Library Park” proposal, which would you rather do?

Detail follows.

Continue reading Post #372: Patrick Henry, power lines, parks, and value.

This post is a followup to my prior writeups of the new Patrick Henry library.  You can see my discussion of what the consulting firm proposed in Post #367, and you can see my “Library Park” alternative in Post #369.

The point here is to ask the following:  Sure, it costs more to put the parking garage underground, as in my “Library Park” proposal.  But in return, that buys the Town a one-third-acre park on Maple Avenue.  Is the tradeoff worth it?  And I mean that in a very narrow sense: Is this cheaper than simply buying a third of an acre of commercial land on Maple, given current prices?

The answer appears to be yes.  In round numbers, a $1M investment in putting the bulk of the parking underground would buy the Town a new one-third-acre park on Maple Avenue.  That works out to about $3M/acre.  As I understand it, commercial property on Maple is currently going for around $6M/acre.  So, think of this as a way to get park land at half-price.  (It’s actually slightly less than half-price, due to the foregone tax revenues that would result from buying commercial land outright and converting it to park land.)

To be clear, there’s no sleight-of-hand here.  This is just a consequence of what builders already know:  When land prices are high, it’s smarter to conserve land by build parking garages than to have surface parking lots.  In this case, I’m just using the land that would be saved by an underground parking garage as a park, instead of using it to make a larger building.

This approach has several other advantages beyond being a (comparatively) cheap source of park land.  The foremost of those is that this frees Fairfax County to build a showpiece of a library, instead of stuffing the new library under a parking garage.

I hope the Town will give this, or something like this (underground parking) all due consideration.

Continue reading Post #371: Library Park, Part 2