Philadelphia 2035 (York, Penn: condo, how much, hotel)

[Indiana Tony]

Originally Posted by Pennsport

I still don’t understand. On one hand you have thousands of people who literally cannot take care of themselves and yet still pop out multiple babies. We must then take care of, and pay for, all of the above. On the other hand you have people who are driving the economy and supporting the deadbeats. If it takes some tax breaks to get them into the city, so be it. Without said tax breaks I doubt these folks would live in the city. I’m confused as to why you wouldn’t want their money in your city. Someone has to pay for the people who refuse to acknowledge responsibility.

(end discussion)

[Indiana Tony]

Originally Posted by mphilly

Completely understand. I will always root for Philly teams even if I move to a different city.

I'm a four-for-four guy, but I'm fluid under certain circumstances.

[Indiana Tony]

Originally Posted by Pennsport

Let me rephrase. People are fiercely loyal to the decisions they have made. As such, a NY transplant who chose to come here, will, in my opinion, defend Philly to the end.

Even if they realize they made a mistake, they wouldn't admit to it. And I wouldn't care, as long as they stay.


Maybe they'll bring a decent hotdog with them.

[MarketStEl]

I am going to wade into the property tax abatement briar patch, because I have some grasp on how it works.

Originally Posted by Nitro2985

One of our local Philly leftists took a look at this one though and noted that this tower is actually about as dense as a series of row homes.

https://twitter.com/donoteat1/status...69161221783554


Personally not impressed with the tower myself. And I've made my thoughts clear before on the tax abatement in Philly being just a tax cut for the wealthy and upper middle class.

Originally Posted by BPP1999

Property taxes are $0. But the wealthy are still paying wage taxes as residents. They are also paying the School Income Tax (which is set at the wage tax rate) on their dividends and certain capital gains, plus they are paying Net Profits Taxes on their business income (at the wage tax rate). So the city gets a lot more more than nothing.

(emphasis added)

Both boldfaced statements are wrong. Flat. Out. Wrong. I'll elaborate after this:

How many of you here read this article I wrote about a month before the May primary?

Will Tax Abatement Reform Trade Short-Term Gain for Long-Term Pain? | Real Estate and Home | Philadelphia Magazine

The article's an explainer of a study the city Finance Director commissioned JLL's New York office (in order to avoid local entanglement, the city didn't ask JLL Philadelphia to do it) to conduct in 2018. The study made 30-year revenue, housing production and construction-job projections for several tax abatement scenarios ranging from leaving the current arrangement in place to getting rid of it completely.

I was surprised when I went about writing this that I found no similar explainer in any other local media outlet in the year since the study was issued.

As far as the first boldfaced statement is concerned: No, it's not. What it really is is a subsidy to the builder. Have any of you heard the phrase "New York costs and Philadelphia rents"? Residential builders and real estate market analysts throughout the region use it to explain the central problem builders here face: our construction costs are high - so high that builders couldn't make a profit on most of the houses they built if they charged what the market here would bear. The lower tax bill allows the builder to charge a little more for the house, enough to make a difference in the bottom line.

New housing production here took off after the abatement was implemented, and the abated homes have been contributing their full weight to the city treasury after the abatements expire - and equally to the point, the owners of these houses don't sell them simply because the abatements expire.

Most of the options the report studied found that the city would lose significant amounts of money over 30 years compared to the status quo - and production of new (and rehabbed) housing would plummet, and construction jobs (and the wage taxes those construction workers earn) would also fall sharply. As I put it in the article, the question to ask regarding keeping vs. scrapping the abatement is, "Do we want a sugar rush or are we carbo-loading for the marathon?"

The abatement does have greater value for higher-priced houses than lower-priced ones, but it's not useless at the lower end of the spectrum either. And even with the abatement, new housing production here isn't as great as it could be. I'm going to quote the last two paragraphs of my article here to underscore this point:

[Kevin] Gillen [of Drexel University's Lindy Center for Urban Innovation, one of the leading local analysts of the city housing market] also pointed out that while the construction boom since 2000 has been torrid compared to what preceded it, it’s actually fairly anemic compared to what’s happened in other large American cities. “Our housing stock production has trailed cities similar to us in size,” says Gillen. “We’ve built 10,000 to 12,000 houses” since the current market cycle began around 2012, “but Dallas has built 50,000, and it’s smaller than us.”

And with housing affordability still a hot topic locally, keeping the abatement as is might be worthwhile for another reason: The report notes that almost all of the affordable housing developments built in the city in recent years took advantage of the abatements.

(emphasis added)

Now, as for the part about property taxes being zero: This too is a widespread misinterpretation. Property taxes are abated, not eliminated - that means they don't rise as they would otherwise due to the improvement. Buyers of abated new homes still pay property tax on the value of the land, and buyers of abated rehabbed homes pay tax on the land and the value of the house prior to the improvements that are subject to the abatement.

I happen to advocate Henry George's argument that we should tax the value of the land only. Doing that, and raising the rate of the tax, would at once keep the total tax flow the same while having the same salutary effect on new housing production and rehabilitation of existing housing stock.

Originally Posted by PHL10

Dranoff gets stuff built but he's also very conservative. I mean, it took 5 years to get this tower going. I'm sure he did his market research. Our metro is 4-6 million depending on how you look at it so another one hundred 2+ million condos isn't overboard. If you look at greater Center City, hundreds of properties are selling in the $750+ range. There's obliviously money around.

Again, the only other story besides my own that mentioned one of the big reasons the project was both delayed and revised was Curbed Philly's. Dranoff had applied for a state grant to help finance the hotel portion of the project from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP). Curbed reported that he got only about one-third of the money he sought; it was my understanding that the grant had been denied completely, and Dranoff said this when I asked him about it. I do know that he applied for the RACP grant twice. Absent the grant, he reworked the project as a condo-only building.

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by MB1562

Sports loyalties die hard. I absolutely love Philadelphia as a city and have lived here 9 years now, but I'll never give up my loyalty to the Boston teams I was raised on. Why would I want to become a fan of a city that, minus a few fluke years, is pretty mediocre?

I was born in 1992. Since then, I've seen my teams win 6 Super Bowls, 4 World Series, 1 NBA Championship, 1 Stanley Cup (and possibly another if the Bruins win tonight). Philadelphia may be an intense sports city, but its teams don't produce wins to match that.

You're leaving the city you "absolutely love" and you can take your American league MBL love with you. lol I really only care about baseball, btw.

Seriously, and I've said it before lots of Negadelphia-ism derives from having multiple pro sports teams and no consistent championships. It's a feedback loop kind thing,imo.

[PHL10]

Originally Posted by MB1562

Sports loyalties die hard. I absolutely love Philadelphia as a city and have lived here 9 years now, but I'll never give up my loyalty to the Boston teams I was raised on. Why would I want to become a fan of a city that, minus a few fluke years, is pretty mediocre?

I was born in 1992. Since then, I've seen my teams win 6 Super Bowls, 4 World Series, 1 NBA Championship, 1 Stanley Cup (and possibly another if the Bruins win tonight). Philadelphia may be an intense sports city, but its teams don't produce wins to match that.

The counter to this is that it doesn't take much character to root for the winner. It's great that your teams win but that fact that Philadelphia's team don't and the fans are still rapid is a credit to the fan base, not a detraction.

You could also infer from your statement in bold that if Boston's teams weren't good that you might switch allegiances. Once again, that doesn't say much about your loyalties.

[cpomp]

Sandy, I hope you post that response throughout social media. There are so many people unfamiliar and uneducated on how the abatement works. You can certainly help fix that (I'm sure you already are).

[Redddog]

Originally Posted by PHL10

The counter to this is that it doesn't take much character to root for the winner. It's great that your teams win but that fact that Philadelphia's team don't and the fans are still rapid is a credit to the fan base, not a detraction.

You could also infer from your statement in bold that if Boston's teams weren't good that you might switch allegiances. Once again, that doesn't say much about your loyalties.

Ah, the Boston sports fan. The most annoying fan you'll encounter in the wild....

You want to see a loyalist? I'm a Browns fan.

(mike drop)

[MB1562]

Originally Posted by kyb01

You're leaving the city you "absolutely love" and you can take your American league MBL love with you. lol I really only care about baseball, btw.

Seriously, and I've said it before lots of Negadelphia-ism derives from having multiple pro sports teams and no consistent championships. It's a feedback loop kind thing,imo.

Lol, I'll never understand why you take things that aren't personal so personally. I'm not leaving because I "don't love" Philadelphia, I'm leaving because there are much better opportunities in a better city. Just because New York is better doesn't mean Philadelphia isn't great or that I don't love it. My generation didn't get the golden goose economy where we could stay at one employer for decades on end in one city and retire comfortably. We have to constantly jump around to get the best opportunity and that is exactly what I'm doing. It's not personal, it's reality.

[MB1562]

Originally Posted by PHL10

You could also infer from your statement in bold that if Boston's teams weren't good that you might switch allegiances. Once again, that doesn't say much about your loyalties.

Don't know where you got that from. I come from a family of either Boston fans or New Yorks (but Mets not Yankees, Jets not Giants, Rangers not Islanders), so we know a thing or two about not being good. Boston teams were pretty crappy for the most part until the 2000s. So no, I wouldn't switch allegiances one bit, but I got lucky being born into an era where we dominated.

I'll say it again. Philadelphia, as far as winning goes, is a mediocre sports town. Their fans are obviously a different story. They win at all levels in that department.