City floats changing runoff requirements

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It could get cheaper to redevelop sites in Charlotte.

Under current rules, redevelopment means coughing up whatever it costs — and it can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, some say — to install devices that control where stormwater goes after a project, like a new shopping center, is complete.

Developers and some city officials say such costs are deal-killers. But if the City Council OKs a proposal, developers would find themselves avoiding installing the devices not just in certain parts of Charlotte, but the whole city and in extra-territorial jurisdiction areas under a two-year trial basis. Instead, they would pay a mitigation fee that would cost them a lot less.

Of course, such a proposal does not sit well with those concerned about the environment.

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ordinance upset environmentalists

During a public hearing on the proposal, Ernie McLaney, a Charlotte resident who serves on the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Stewardships Advisory Council, said expanding the area where the mitigation fee applies is a bad idea.

Ditto for Charlotte resident Alan Burns, who said that while developers are struggling in the current economy, the environment would be harmed by getting rid of environmental protections in city ordinances.

“We live here,” Burns said. “We’ve got to suffer for the next how many years?”

City officials say they have the best interests of the environment in mind, too.

Darryl Hammock, Charlotte’s water quality and environmental permitting manager, said the proposal is part of a push to encourage redevelopment of older sites instead of so-called “greenfield” developments — those involving the destruction of trees.

“It is better for the environment for someone not to go out to the edge of Charlotte and cut down an acre of trees and put in an acre of asphalt,” he said. “It’s better to do that at an abandoned site.”

The stormwater-control devices requirement is part of the city’s post-construction controls ordinance. But with the price of land more expensive the closer it is to uptown, some city officials are worried that the costs associated with the devices are driving away infill redevelopment, meaning the reuse of sites in Charlotte’s more urbanized areas.

For now, the mitigation fee, which ranges from $60,000 to $90,000 an acre depending on the property, is an option only for sites in distressed business districts or transit station areas. If the proposal is approved, developers could pay the fee — in lieu of installing stormwater-control devices — no matter where the redevelopment is taking place.  Such fees allow the city to build its own stormwater devices downstream.

“If you’re building a $100 million project, maybe a 10-story building, paying $90,000 is a no-brainer,” Hammock said.

The City Council’s environmental committee is expected to consider the issue Aug. 22.

One project in which such a fee was paid was Johnson & Wales University’s student center, which was built last year on a South Cedar Street parking lot in uptown.

Because the university was redeveloping the site after the adoption of the ordinance, it ordinarily would have to install stormwater-control devices on the property. But the property was in an area that qualified for the fee instead.

At $58,200, the mitigation fee paid by the university seems hefty.

But compared with the cost of installing a stormwater- quality-control device underground, it’s a steal, some say.

Depending on the project, such devices can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars if they are underground, like the device the J&W property would have required, said Mark Van Sickle, project manager for Charlotte architectural firm Little & Associations.

“The mitigation was done there because they didn’t have the land available to provide the water-quality device, and it’s so expensive to do it underground,” said Van Sickle, who worked on the J&W student center.

J&W had stormwater-control devices already constructed on a neighboring property that could handle the runoff associated with the student center site, Van Sickle said.

Hammock cited a shipping facility belonging to Cato Corp. as an example of the challenges the stormwater-control requirements pose for projects.

The Charlotte-based clothing retailer wants to add on to a facility on Sweden Road. But installing underground stormwater-control devices would shut down the company’s warehouse during construction, Hammock said.

John Cato, the company’s CEO, said the city’s proposal would make redevelopment more economically feasible in urban areas with less surface area to install such devices.

Besides putting languishing sites back into use, there are other positives that come with redeveloping urban sites, Hammock said. Such redevelopment helps the city meet its transportation infrastructure goals by, one, placing businesses where mass transit exists and, two, avoiding the negative impact that chopping down trees can have on air quality, he said.

There’s yet another advantage to urban redevelopment projects, he said: When a site covered in concrete sits vacant or underused, it contributes to runoff. But the city can use the mitigation fee from the redevelopment of the site to construct stormwater-control devices downstream where needed, he said.

“Until you have a stormwater control put on them, or until the city puts in a stormwater control, the water quality isn’t improved,” he said.

Jim Homan, vice president of construction services for Charlotte-based apartment developer Charter Properties, said the mitigation fee might be the only way to start redevelopment in some parts of the city.

Charter’s new projects mostly take place in the suburbs, but it has done a few redevelopment projects within the city, Homan said.

“I think there are going to be sites — not particularly apartment sites — that the only way they can be redeveloped is if mitigation is offered because there’s not enough land to do major improvements,” he said.

According to Hammock, “a lot of folks” have taken advantage of the mitigation fee over the past three years. The city has collected $1.5 million in mitigation fees since the ordinance was adopted in 2008, he said.

“And we noticed projects outside of those areas coming in for plan submittals, but they weren’t ultimately being built,” he said. “They were submitting plans, talking about requirements and then going away. Yet they seemed to be going forward in other areas with the mitigation fees.”

Ramsey can be reached at [email protected].