Jones Lang LaSalle


Think Nimby-ism is tough today?
Just wait. Community leaders are getting smarter--and crustier--about unwanted development, say the authors of a recent study. Developers will have to take to the grassroots in response.

By John Salustri

Do you find it's getting tougher to rubber stamp a project concept? The results of a recently released survey confirm not only that the days of backroom deals are over, but also that developers are facing increasingly stiff opposition to local development. In fact, while casinos and nuclear plants are obvious targets of Nimby-minded citizens, more innocuous projects as well are falling by the way.

"I was talking to a guy who builds commercial and retail, and up to five years ago, everything he proposed was built as he proposed it," reports P. Michael Saint, CEO of the Hingham, MA-based Saint Consulting Group. "In the past five years, 45% of his projects have gone down to defeat because of citizen opposition, and he builds only in Nebraska and Kansas. So what was really a coastal movement back in the '80s has swept across the country. If you look at demographics, more people means more cars and more gridlock and more people saying no to new development."


Increasingly, elected officials are under fire from constituents to oppose new development in their communities.
Source: The Saint Consulting Group

Needless to say, development projects always offer a mixed bag of benefits and challenges to a local community, and each one has to be judged on its own merit or lack of it. Nevertheless, the study, commissioned by Saint, a political analyst, says that Americans are twice as likely to oppose new real estate development projects as support them. The phone survey, which tapped into the mindset of 1,000 people across the nation, years 18 and older, showed a pretty passionate collective community.

"The most surprising thing to me was that one out of five American families have actively opposed development in their communities," says president Patrick Fox. They're protest efforts have grown up, says Fox, well beyond the placards one usually associates with community protest. He says local citizens are far more likely today to mount a letter-writing campaign and organize community groups to pelt elected officials with their protests, to "ensure their voices are heard in a politically sophisticated fashion." The Saint executives are quick to point out that the nature of the conflict isn't solely between developer and resident, but rather, the local community often finds itself pitted against the elected official as well, interested in the tax base a new project promises. But that is changing.

"In the past, people who wanted to get things built went in, smoked a cigar with the building inspector and came out with a permit," says Saint. After all, "Growth was good and jobs and taxes would be created and the mayor wanted to take credit for progress in the community." But over the past 15 years, with smart growth; anti-sprawl; or concerns about "endangered species, wetlands or Indian burial grounds," the politicos are caving to local pressure.

Still want to cut a backroom deal with the mayor? "Not if there are 300 angry residents in the room," says Fox. "That backroom deal is out the window." And residents have further recourse, such as lawsuits that can stall a project for years or, in states such as Ohio and California, enough signatures can get a measure on a ballot that will "freeze the project through election time."

Much of the battle today is fought in the polling place, and the survey reveals that 93% of Americans care about a candidate's position on new development. "For senior citizens," says Saint, "66% said it was very important, and they vote in much greater number than the rest of the populace. So candidates are starting to realize that regardless of the tax-base implications, a strong stance against new development in the community is going to be politically advantageous. All of those actions make it more difficult for anything to get built, whether it's a casino or a big-box retailer."

As the means grow in sophistication and those who would be mayor embrace anti-sprawl measures, the debate is sure to intensify. "Absolutely," says Fox. "If you look at the trends, there are more fights publicized in the local paper. If you're a citizen of Community X, and you see the citizens of Community Y said no successfully to a problem project, you feel empowered to go out and tell your city officials and your mayor to say no as well."

So what's a developer to do? There are actually a number of steps developers are taking to skirt around the protests, but in a day of more sophisticated debate, backroom deals and traditionally lobbying efforts simply won't get the job done. In large, region-altering projects such as casinos, "smart developers try to find places where the community-benefits package is going to outweigh the negative impact," says Saint "They find places where they're not necessarily building in the center of a middle-class community." He adds that those casinos that do emerge do in fact have the unassailable support of local government, "because of the tax-base issue."

But even on smaller projects, the big-box or the strip center, new political inroads have to be created, and smart developers are working the streets as much as city hall. "The smart ones are spending much more time working the politics of the zoning-approval process than they ever did in the past," says Saint. "They're spending time going door to door, talking to neighbors and trying to find ways to get people to show up in favor of the project." It's clearly a better alternative than having "a crowd of 300 against to show up with no one but the developer's own paid consultants in favor."

"Developers do a due diligence procedures before they commit to a new project," says Fox, "to make sure the market is there or the traffic patterns will be OK. They need to do a political due diligence to make sure that it is politically feasible to get the project approved."