Services
Municipal governments, at some point, will entertain development or redevelopment proposals, with the express intention of increasing local real estate value and employment opportunities. 4ward Planning’s development advisory services are suited to those local governments which do not have staff experienced with evaluation of development proposals – particularly the evalua-tion of project development and operating pro forma, requests for tax abatements or payment in lieu of tax (PILOTS) requests, and tax increment financing (TIF).
Working with key municipal staff persons, 4ward Planning undertakes a comprehensive analysis to ensure financial feasibility, fiscal neutrality and that prospective incentives are tied to per-formance and investment milestones.
Our development advisory services can include the following:
- RFP/RFQ Development
- RFP/RFQ Evaluation Scoring
- Deal Terms Drafting
- Financial Feasibility Analysis
- Evaluation of Incentive Requests
- Fiscal Impact Assessment
- Negotiation Assistance
Development and redevelopment projects will always create a combination of benefits and costs to the local and regional host communities. Understanding the direction and magnitude of these bene-fits and costs is the focus of project sustainability analysis.
4ward Planning employs quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques to evaluate the project’s prospective impact on the following system areas:
The term “Greyfield” refers to those commercial facilities (typically, older retail center sites) which have fallen into obsolescence or are shuttered and are no longer competitive with area properties within their asset class.
As Greyfield sites will contain between 15- and 20-acres of property, they represent tremendous opportunity for achieving financially feasible, fiscally sound sustainable mixed-use develop-ment for many communities.
Greyfield sites present a means to:
- Create a mixed-use, mixed-income sustainable neighborhood
- Create a transit node linking workers to jobs, housing and commerce
- Create higher quality of life through green space and public amenities
- Increase the tax ratable base
- Remove blight and the potential for crime
Public parks have long been recognized for their ecological and social value; less understood (and studied) is the economic and positive fiscal value attributable to parks. Many of the highest real estate values in urban areas are associated with properties fronting parks or green space. Parks de-partment administrators and park advocates have become particularly aware of the economic and fiscal value associated with parks, given significant reductions in government funding to maintain and operate parks.
4ward Planning’s approach to park revenue generation analysis involves interviews with local stakeholders and park patrons, as well as officials responsible for its maintenance. We supplement this qualitative approach with an analysis of demographic trends within the likely patron user shed surrounding the park.
Recommendations for revenue generation activities appropriate for park space are drawn from pri-mary research and best case examples from around the country.
A typical park funding evaluation includes the following:
- Analysis of park patron user shed.
- Audit of existing and planned recreational amenities within the user shed.
- Examination of current programming and revenue generation activities.
- Interviews and/or focus groups with area residents, to discern current perceptions.
- Analysis of prospective funding and revenue opportunities and best management practices.
A community or fiscal impact analysis examines the linkage between local government revenue generated by new development and its resultant municipal service costs (e.g., police, fire, schools, sanitation, etc.). The principal objective of a fiscal impact analysis is to determine whether a proposed land use will, ultimately, be beneficial or detrimental to a community's fis-cal condition.
Economic impact analysis involves applying a final demand change to a predictive economic in-put-output model, and then analyzing the resulting changes in the economy under study. More concisely, an impact analysis is an assessment of change in overall economic activity as a result of some change in one or several economic activities.
4ward Planning's approach to fiscal impact analysis combines qualitative and quantitative meth-ods, based on one of the three conventional approaches: Per Capita, Marginal and Econometric. Data collection and evaluation is performed in a transparent manner, such that findings are eas-ily understood. We utilize IMPLAN Professional 3.0, a widely used economic impact assessment software system developed by the Minnesota IMPLAN Group. IMPLAN is designed to simplify and expedite input-output accounting process (e.g., commodity flows from producers to interme-diaries to final consumers and all related multipliers associated with output and employment for a given geography).
