Clearing the Air on Pub Bars

As I’m sure everyone in Elizabethton by this point knows, the City Council voted last week to approve pub bars as a new use in the city. There has been a lot of misinformation and miscommunication about what the regulations say and require of pub bars, so I want to take some time today to clarify these points.

The pub bar regulations that were passed last week were specifically tailored to regulate the type of establishment that City Council has desired to allow, while at the same time attempting to discourage the types of establishments people commonly think of when they hear “pub” or “bar.” First, pub bars (along with breweries and microbreweries) are required to provide food. They can be in the form of pre-prepared snacks or platters for purchase or freely available, but they must provide some food. The difference between this and a restaurant is that the primary purpose of the establishment is not to provide food.

There has also been some discussion regarding breweries and microbreweries confusing these issues. Breweries and microbreweries have been legal in the city for almost a year now and the regulations allow for them to have a tap room on-site. When crafting these regulations, we simply looked for similar uses of pub bars (in this case brewery and microbrewery tap rooms) and set a similar standard for them.

Next, in our definition of a pub bar, we require that 80 percent of the alcoholic beverages served must be from a microbrewery (a brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels annually). This does two things. The first, is it encourages pub bar owners to purchase from small businesses in our region (all the microbreweries in our region produce under 15,000 barrels) where they can easily self-distribute to a local pub bar and, secondly, because craft beer is much more costly than high production domestic beer, it raises the sale price of the beer making the economics of drinking to the point of inebriation unappealing. This same logic has been used at local festivals that have started serving beer with no issues.

Fourthly is the issue of beer on sidewalks. While this was included in the regulations passed last week, there are strict requirements to serve on the sidewalks and in no case would someone walking down the street with a beer in-hand be allowed. The regulations allow for beer service so long as the business owner obtains a sidewalk encroachment permit and provides a barrier between where sidewalk pedestrians are and where beer service is allowed. Patrons of the pub bar will not be allowed to simply sit along the curb, walk down the street, or crowd the sidewalk with the beer in-hand.

Lastly, the City Council will be passing next month an ordinance amendment that will require pub bars to not provide service after 11:00pm. Currently, other establishments serving alcohol can serve later than 11:00pm. This will help ensure that pub bars do not become establishments open all hours of the night or become endless drinking establishments. We encourage our downtown businesses to stay open after 5:00pm, but staying open after 11:30pm or midnight is probably not something we want in our downtown. This will help ensure these businesses stay open late enough to provide a venue for those who desire it, but not stay all night.

City Council and city staff have put a lot of research, review, and have had many discussions with officials from Johnson City, Erwin, and even a few small towns in southwest Virginia regarding the impacts of tap rooms, breweries, and pub bars on their communities. There may be some who are upset and some who are happy, but in either case please do not think that City Council or city staff took the crafting and passage of these regulations lightly. We have worked together to craft regulations that we believe will achieve responsible establishments for our citizens who wish to partake of these types of beverages. Let’s talk about it!

Littering Has an Impact on our Economy

I recently attended a Keep Carter County Beautiful (the former Carter County Proud) meeting and was astounded by the reports of the group on some of their street and highway cleanups. Milligan Highway, Old Bristol Highway, and other various roads around the county (including the city) which individuals had collected multiple full garbage bags worth of random trash just sitting in the ditch-lines. Both of these roads are secondary entrances into our county and, while not likely, very well may be used by tourists visiting us. But, logic would imply that if these roads are like this, our major entrances (think 19E and 321/Elk Avenue) very well may be worse.

Once a year, the Chamber of Commerce has sponsored a river clean up. Every year they pull bags worth of garbage, tires, larger plastic toys, and other household items from our rivers. Similar efforts occur at Watauga Lake and Wilbur Lake each year. If you’ve visited any of the little coves on Watauga or Wilbur lake via a boat or kayak, you know what I’m talking about -- plastic bottles, styrofoam cups, and random pieces of plastics from who knows what. Some of this comes from boats on the lake, while some of it flows into the lake through rivers and streams, but regardless of where it comes from it makes us look bad.

Imagine you plan a family vacation in the mountains out west. You’re looking for something affordable, yet relaxing with things to do nearby. When you arrive, however, you find fast-food bags thrown in the ditch lines, rubber tires trapped along the side of a river that you’ve paid to float down, or a plastic bottle floating beside you on the lake you're paddle boarding on. I don’t know about you, but that would probably be the last time I would visit that place! Sure, the scenery is great, but the trash just ruins that picturesque image of that place.

This could easily be Elizabethton and Carter County. As we work to improve the tourist economy in our county, we must keep in mind that we are opening our home to others. Surely you wouldn’t invite friends over and leave your house a mess. We need to do the same to our community. Save that fast-food bag in the car until you get home or your destination. Many businesses and restaurants have garbage cans right outside their entrance that you can use. Take advantage of our free, County operated recycling centers, return used fluorescent bulbs to Lowes, or plastic bags to Ingles or Food City. Help keep our home ready and prepared to accept visitors. After all, they’re helping us and our economy more than we’re helping them! Let’s talk about it!

Less Parking, High Density means more Revenue

Property values are something that are vital to the cities in Tennessee and, for the most part, most cities in modern America. Almost every state has a revenue model that allows cities and counties to collect property taxes to pay for services. It is important for cities to, therefore, protect and increase property values. This is why we have a property maintenance officer, this is why cities condemn and demolish old, dilapidated homes and buildings, and this is why cities control development patterns – all to protect and increase the property values.

One way of comparing property values is by using a similar unit. An analysis suggests using the value per acre as a measure to compare developments. Using this process, can you guess which buildings in the city are the most valuable? Walmart? Lowes? Maybe one of our shopping centers? Oh, what about Snap-On? Certainly, these businesses do provide a lot of property taxes to the city and county, but the answer is no. On a per acre basis, the most valuable commercial property in the city is the Downtown Branch of Carter County Bank. The value, $5,765,670 (per acre of course). In other words, if we had an entire acre of property and built nothing else on it except buildings like the Downtown Branch that property would have a value of just over $5.7 million! Walmart on the other-hand, has a per acre value of $523,907, Lowes $537,179, and West Towne Shopping Center $392,903.

So, what could cause such a deviation in these values? After all, it’s not like Walmart or Lowes is a cheap building. Well, one of the biggest differences is the use of the property. Think about the Downtown Branch of Carter County Bank – the building takes up almost all the property and has a second story that is used for offices. Walmart, Lowes, and West Towne have huge buildings (in comparison) but have even bigger parking lots. Walmart alone has just under 9 acres of parking lot! The value of the parking lot is essentially $0. Having a vacant property with a parking lot on it provides little to no increase in the property value.

While parking lots are a necessity, an almost 9-acre parking lot (which was required by the city at the time) seems a little excessive. How many times a year do you see it full? Even requiring Walmart to have 1 less acre of parking could have resulted in having another restaurant like the size of Bojangles or Captain D’s. These would have generated at least increased the property value more than a parking lot resulting in additional tax revenues.

While the answer is certainly not getting rid of parking requirements, it might serve us well to reduce parking requirements and encourage denser development. This will help ensure that the city is getting the best return on our investment both when we invest roads and water and sewer infrastructure into a project. Let’s talk about it!

Bringing Main Street to Downtown Elizabethton

You may have heard more recently about the national Main Street Program. This is a program founded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a way to help historic downtowns and commercial neighborhoods revitalize. The program has been used across the county with much greater success than most other revitalization program. As a matter of fact, there are over 1,600 current Main Street communities nation-wide, 34 Main Street cities in Tennessee, and 58 Downtown cities (Main Street’s program for smaller towns) in Tennessee.
 The Main Street program helps communities organize and develop a community vision for their downtown. This is essential to ensure that we make sure we’re moving our downtown in a consistent direction forward. The program also looks at market capacity. What types of businesses do we need that would do well in the Elizabethton market. That information is then used to help develop a realistic vision for the future of the downtown and to help recruit new businesses to downtown.
 The program then utilizes the community vision and market information to help transform a downtown. During the transformation phase (which is never-ending), the program utilizes four areas of focus to ensure that community goals and the vision are being accomplished – economic vitality, design, promotion, and organization. Commonly, each of these four points have their own sub-committee of the larger Main Street board which oversees the program. Each of these sub-committees would contribute to the vision by focusing on their point. As time moves on and each of these points gain a clearer focus, and downtown development will begin to improve.
 A working committee of people with a range of ages made up of city councilmen, downtown businesses, downtown property owners, and chamber of commerce representatives, have been working and considering options for downtown revitalization and enhancing our downtown to take it to “the next level.” The committee has heard from some national and state speakers on the topic, visited other communities to see what they’re doing, and studied options that the State of Tennessee has to offer.
 At this point, they are considering recommending that Elizabethton become a Main Street community but are still looking for input. They’ll be holding a public meeting Wednesday, November 7^th at 5:30pm and another on Thursday, November 8^th at 8:00am at the Coffee Company to present this idea and gather input from the community to see if there is enough support locally.
 Elizabethton becoming a Main Street community brings a lot of positives for our downtown, but there are also some challenges. The Main Street program requires a full-time staff person, funding, volunteers, and, most importantly, downtown business and community support! This is not a program that the city can just create, and the success will happen. The most successful programs are usually independent of city government with their own funding sources and volunteers. In short, the most successful programs involve you. The program will not be successful if citizens who want to see success in downtown do not participate, attend meetings, and volunteer for events. We all have busy lives, but volunteering on the board or sub-committee for a few hours a month or giving your time to a downtown summer event is the only way success will happen. Are you in? Let’s talk about it!

New Incentive Policy Benefits Everyone

As reported in the Elizabethton Star, the Elizabethton City Council and the Carter County Commission have recently approved an incentives policy to promote the growth and recruitment of new industry and businesses to Elizabethton and Carter County. I’ve had a few people ask what the policy was all about and why do we even need an incentives policy, so I thought I was write about it.

The policy that the Council and the Commission passed, gives the authority for the respective Industrial Development Boards to give incentives to companies meeting certain requirements. These include things like hiring a minimum number of people and providing health care and a retirement plan for those people, building an addition to an existing facility, and expanding equipment at the facility. Additionally, this policy also gives these same incentives to tourism-based businesses – which is now unique only to Carter County in Tennessee.

Having this policy in places gives companies and economic development staff the assurance that incentives can be offered. Essentially, most companies don’t want their business aired in a public meeting – especially if they’re negotiating on an expansion – to help protect their stock-holders and prevent their competition from finding out. Without this policy in place, every time a company wanted an incentive they would have to go before City Council to negotiate one agreement and before the County Commission to negotiate another agreement which may be vastly different. This policy streamlines this process for the business.

It’s also beneficial for the government and tax payers in that we’ve developed the policy based on what the true return-on-investment of the business will be to the tax base. Unlike some incentives in the past, where we’ve arbitrarily given all the property taxes away with little to no consideration to the fiscal impact on the city and county, this policy takes those elements into consideration. It offers a workforce incentive based on existing ratios of workers living in Carter County, payroll to sales tax, and city to county sales tax. This looks at return-on-investment by ensuring what the city and county give in workforce incentives comes back in the form of sales tax revenues.

A similar analysis was done (albeit much easier to calculate) with real property and personal property taxes and in these incentives, we only incentivized the increase in the property taxes that would have been paid on the expanded building or new equipment – like tax increment financing. This helps ensure that the city and county will continue to receive the revenues they have always received from these businesses in order to pay for the public services that they still consume.

Lastly, to prevent the incentives from getting too out-of-hand, we have capped them at 40% of what the existing company already pays in taxes. Keep in mind, that an industry may pay $40,000-$100,000 in property taxes annually and when the city or county decide to fully abate their taxes the government lose all that money at once – which could easily be a 2-3 people’s salary and benefits. Capping the incentive at 40% of will ensure that the company will pay at least 60% of what they’ve always been paying in taxes while still giving them relief on any capital expenditures.

This policy was intentionally written to protect the tax-payers while incentivizing existing and new companies and its adoption serves as a win-win-win for the companies, governments, and tax-payers. Let’s talk about it!

Attracting Young Families the Only Way to Grow

You’ve heard it before; Carter County’s population is declining, and Elizabethton’s will likely follow suit by the time the next census rolls out in 2020. The real question is what’s happening? Why are people leaving Carter County and where are they going? Well, when we look at the numbers, they’re not leaving – they’re dying. According to the Tennessee Department of Health, 746 people died in Carter County during the year 2016. During the same year, only 488 babies were born. Statistically Carter County is losing citizens at an average rate of 3.3 people for every 1,000 people annually. That’s around 184 people per year!

Of course, it never sounds like a good thing when we mention a population loss, but what are the true implications of this? Fewer people means less need for housing within the County. Less housing demand means an increase in dilapidated and neglected properties to deal with. Less housing demand means housing prices will fall or not grow as fast as they do in the surrounding areas (which also means less wealth is created within the County). Less housing demand and lower home values means less money being collected in taxes by governments, which may mean the need to increase taxes on those still living there. Less population means fewer workers for companies and businesses to hire and making it more difficult to recruit new and retain existing businesses to the county. I could go on, but I think you get the point – there are huge implications of a declining population.

So, what can we do to even start addressing this problem? Well, first let me explain the factors affecting population growth. There are two ways communities and counties grow – natural growth (more births than deaths) and migration growth (people moving from somewhere else). Natural growth occurs best when you have a healthy population of females between the ages of 16 to 35 – essentially of birthing age. As we have already discussed, natural growth for Carter County is a no-go. We lack young families in Carter County and I suspect this would be evident if you looked at school enrollment over the past 5-10 years. This leaves us with migration growth as our only option.

Migration growth is a lot more difficult than natural growth, because we must sell our city and county to people who live elsewhere and convince them that our place is better. Thankfully, because of our proximity to Johnson City and Bristol, jobs don’t have to be the first priority (typically this is the hardest part). The average commute time for Carter, Unicoi, and Washington Counties is 21 minutes which easily puts the Tri-County Industrial Park and all the businesses in Johnson City easily within average commute times. In my opinion, the top priority for Elizabethton and Carter County is to make it attractive for young families. We have to start investing in ourselves to make our community and county attractive to an admittedly different, younger generation who look for different amenities where they live and place values on different ways of living than what we’ve seen in previous generations.

The next time your talk to your children, grandchildren, or just a young professional in their late 20s, ask them what they look for in their city and county when they’re deciding where to live. Their answers may be different and what you may even consider impossible to do here in Carter County but consider the alternative. The recent battle over the property tax increase in the County could very well be just the beginning of the County’s future if we don’t start working on making their desires our future. Let’s talk about it!

Want New Shopping in Elizabethton? Shop Local Now.

I hear a lot from citizens who ask me to bring in a particular retailer or restaurant. Right after the ask comes this comment, “If I want to shop/eat at that type of establishment I have to go to Johnson City or Bristol!” Let me tell you, I understand! There are times that I find myself going to Johnson City to eat or shop verses a local business. Sometimes it’s due to convenience (I’m already over there for another reason) while other times it’s intentional (I really want a big steak from Texas Roadhouse).

The concerning part is that new retailers and restaurants look at and gather information about how much money is spent in a community before they locate there. For example, if we were recruiting a Ruby Tuesday’s or Cheddar’s and we met all of their site requirements (population size, household income, available property, average age, traffic counts, etc), they would ask some of the existing businesses like Applebee’s, Fatz, and Beef O’Brady’s how business was and how, say, the Elizabethton Applebee’s compared to the other Applebee’s in Northeast Tennessee (did they have more sales than most, how many customers did they have on average, what was the most popular food item, etc). If Applebee’s here responded saying they are below the average for sales compared to the rest of Northeast Tennessee and Fatz says the same thing, that would cause Ruby Tuesday’s or Cheddar’s to seriously reconsider whether they want to location here in Elizabethton.

This story became a reality when a little over a year ago when we were trying to recruit an off-price department store. They were interested in coming into Elizabethton and felt that it would be a good market for this particular brand. Upon my final contact with the real estate manager, she had some concerns regarding information she had received from Peebles and Burkes regarding their sales verses what they anticipated them to be. With the closing of the Rue21 in Elizabethton and with the company having a sister brand located in Johnson City, they ultimately decided not to locate in Elizabethton at this time. Hopefully they will give us another look in a year!

This is one known example. I know that Peebles and Burkes may not have everything we all want, but all I ask is that you give local businesses a first shot. After all, you likely have to drive near or right past downtown or the West Elk commercial area to get to Johnson City! The same goes for our local restaurants. It’s fine to go to Johnson City or Bristol to celebrate an anniversary or maybe a birthday, but if you’re just short on time one Friday evening try to go to Fatz, Jiggy Rays, or Primo’s rather than Smokey Bones, Main Street Pizza, or Olive Garden in Johnson City. The more we spend in Elizabethton, the more we help Elizabethton grow. Let’s talk about it!

It's Time to Bring Main Street back to Elizabethton

You may have read a month ago about a meeting with the National Main Street and Tennessee Main Street Directors here in Elizabethton. This was the first meeting of a group of folks comprised of downtown businesses and significant stakeholders. We currently have this small group looking at the benefits, ramifications, and costs associated with bringing Elizabethton back into the Main Street program (we were once members back in the 90s) to help make downtown more cohesive and attractive for new business.

For those who are unfamiliar with the program, the Main Street program is a nation-wide program that helps communities revitalize their downtowns and other commercial districts using a four-point approach -- economic vitality, design, promotion, and organization. A committee is assigned to each of these four "pillars" as they are called. The committee is charged with working within the district to promote and develop their specific pillar. Additionally, a Main Street Director (paid position) must also be appointed to oversee the organization and implement the four pillars within the downtown district. The best way to describe this program is to use the idea of a mall. A mall is essentially a commercial "district" comprising of many separate and privately-owned businesses. Just like a mall has a company that manages the design or look, economic balance, and promotion and public perception of the mall, so too is the role of the Main Street Director and the Main Street board.

The Main Street program is a proven model that has been used across the country by hundreds of city and communities. The best part is the same model is proven for both small cities such as Jonesborough and larger cities like Murfreesboro or Kingsport. Because of the hundreds of cities that utilize the program nation-wide, joining the Main Street program gives us access to all those communities to discover what works and what doesn't work without having to try and find out ourselves. A small benefit of becoming a Main Street community is being able to obtain additional grants for downtown programs.

For Elizabethton, becoming a Main Street community provides an outlet for interested citizens to get involved in the success of downtown, a point person for downtown businesses wanting to develop a new festival or promotional event, and a group solely dedicated to seeing downtown grow and succeed. Just as successful malls have great management companies, the same applies to great downtowns. As our group moves forward to consider bringing this program to Elizabethton, we ask for your support and your involvement. After all, it's your downtown. Let's talk about it!

Steps to Creating a Revitalized Downtown

Downtown redevelopment/revitalization has been a hot topic in Elizabethton since I’ve been doing planning in Elizabethton – 9 years. I have talked extensively about the different aspects or steps we need to take, but not a lot about the big picture plan. How do we even get to the point of talking about creating housing for downtown, or recruiting new businesses when we don’t even have buildings ready to be renovated? Let’s look at that today.

One of the first steps we need to take is to develop a unified vision for downtown. Ideally this would be in the form of a plan, but simply writing some goals or characteristics down about the image we all have in our heads is enough to get started. As a part of this step, we must ensure that the City Council, Planning Commission, Business Owners, Property Owners, and our citizens all (or mostly) agree on what that image looks like so that we can move forward.

After we’ve developed the “picture” for downtown, we need to organize. Structure and groups of the different stakeholders need to be created or encouraged. There is a lot of work that will need to be done in the aesthetics, economy, and property development in downtown and it’s something that no one interest group can do solo.

Somewhat simultaneous with the previous action, all parties must work to save and improve the quality of our downtown buildings. It is hard to recruit a new business or start-up business to purchase or lease a building that has a leaky roof, old carpets, outdated electrical, etc. After all, downtown building owners are realistically competing against clean, newer, plain-vanilla-shell spaces on the west side of the city. This can be very expensive and will likely require incentives and assistance for building owners, but the payoff could be great.

The next two steps – pedestrian friendliness and placemaking – are somewhat the same. There is a saying used in the urban planning world that if you want a street to be friendly for pedestrians, design it so a 7-year-old or 70-year-old can comfortably walk across by themselves. Sure, it is not exactly a scientific formula, but we need to evaluate our roads in downtown against this concept. Would you allow your 7-year-old to cross the 3 lanes of Elk Avenue traffic by themselves in downtown? Placemaking similarly encourages pedestrians and people to congregate and often improve the aesthetics and usability of an area.

Lastly, successfully completing the previous steps will result in higher demand for businesses and ultimately housing. We need to ensure quality housing options are available in and immediately around the downtown area. This could include condos, townhouses, single-family homes, or apartments, but a good mix is optimal. This will help generate additional pedestrian activity in downtown and additional revenues for the businesses there.

The most important thing we need to keep in mind during all of this, is that revitalization won’t happen overnight, but over multiple years or even a decade. Asheville has been working on their downtown since the 70s, Jonesborough since the 80s, Greenville, SC since the 70s, Johnson City since the 90s. Small and sustainable incremental change, I believe, will prove to be best for downtown and best for the city overall. The important part is that we start. Let’s talk about it!