Wichita’s comeback is not a zero-sum effort

In case you haven’t noticed, there are two centers of revival activity in Wichita: downtown and the Wichita State University campus.

That’s a good thing, not a zero-sum competition to be concerned about.

After multiple attempts over many decades to reverse downtown’s decline, the revival is now well underway. Through the leadership of Jeff Fluhr and private sector developers, more money each year is going into building new or converting existing buildings into residences.

Cargill’s announcement to relocate its new headquarters to the current Eagle building in Old Town will strengthen both it and nearby downtown.

Meanwhile, earth is moving in a big way over at WSU’s Innovation Campus. Soon, there will be multiple educational and work venues, as well as a new hotel, restaurants and residences, which collectively will transform WSU – in a good way – forever.

This dual-centered growth pattern runs against the traditional thinking in urban development, which holds that downtowns always must be the center of economic and social activity. If they are run down, this thinking goes, then taxpayer funds should be used to “run them back up,” often with subsidies – in the form of special tax abatements – to encourage specific employers to locate their headquarters or other major operations downtown.

Many cities in the United States have followed this model, but with mixed success. It seems to have worked in Greenville, S.C. It hasn’t in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and other cities where downtown transformations haven’t prevented the growth of poverty and crime in adjacent areas.

That’s one of the lessons from a new, thoughtful essay by one of the nation’s leading urban economists and sociologists, who now happens to be president of WSU, John Bardo.

Bardo’s essay has some other lessons worth absorbing.

First, celebrate growth in multiple parts of the city. It’s the norm in our newer “automobile” cities, as Bardo calls them, the metro areas built in America after the subways and above-ground rail systems were installed in America’s older cities in the Northeast and Chicago.

Second, employer location should be market driven. Downtown subsidies, if they exist, should go toward public goods – like reducing crime, improving amenities, like parks, and making cities walkable – rather than showered on particular employers.

As a last resort, and this is my personal view, if any subsidies are to be targeted on individual firms, they should be time limited and aimed at enterprises delivering services and products that people who live in downtown, or are thinking of moving there, would want.

This means supporting grocery stores, dry cleaners, pharmacies or retail that make a place livable, not just a place to work but then to leave at the end of each workday to go to homes in outlying areas.

The younger tech workers who are being attracted to work in Wichita’s emerging downtown tech corridor – as well as the founders and employees of the new companies that will be mentored by the city’s new business accelerator, e2e – could then form the nucleus of a revitalized downtown that would have life to it both day and night.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Wichita’s comeback is not a zero-sum effort."