Deputy Mayor for Planning and Commerce, Andrew Altman
Sept. 5
By Thomas J. Walsh
For PlanPhilly
Changes implemented by the Nutter administration to the Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Adjustment are all well and good, but developers at this week’s local Urban Land Institute breakfast at the Union League seemed to be somewhat hesitant about the pace and scope of that change.
“I think that’s normal, given the interaction between government and money,” said Andrew Altman, deputy mayor for Planning and Economic Development, when reached for comment after the meeting. “I’ve been on both sides of that. There’s understandable concern. Any time there’s change or uncertainty, people are concerned. I think it’s a healthy part of the dialogue. I thought it was a good meeting ... a healthy discussion.”
Rina Cutler, Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities and one of the other panelists for a session moderated by Center City District czar Paul Levy, said she hopes a long-term infrastructure plan will be in place a year from now, but that the Planning Commission had essentially been “privatized” over the years. “The government needs to take the planning piece back,” she said.
That was at the start of the discussion. Cutler seemed to mollify the crowd, well populated with commercial real estate brokers, lawyers and private developers, with an off-ramp to the hour-and-45-minute discussion: “The goal of planning oughta be action, not planning.” Those were the last words of the morning.
In between, there was interesting back-and-forth between a pleasantly blunt Carl Primavera, the 30-year veteran real estate and land use attorney from Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg & Ellers LLC; Altman; and Cutler. (Altman is also the city’s Director of Commerce).
Growing pains
Given the national political rhetoric of the past fortnight, I hate to say it, but the word “change” was in the air at the breakfast. As in: It’s not easy.
Levy employed his usual efficiently eloquent and realistic litany of the pros and cons of the regional development situation and an acknowledgement of the tough credit markets that exist nationally. Locally, he called the current situation “a very, very interesting and challenging time for our city and region,” and that we have a mayor who is implementing the kind of reform that most of the people sipping coffee in the room in front of him had been seeking for a long time.
“We have what I would call the challenge of change, which is precisely because the Nutter administration is involved in the restructuring of government that we asked them to do,” Levy said. “That is, in putting the pieces together differently, there are new uncertainties. Many, many people did not like the old rules, but they understood how to play the game. Right now, new rules are being written, and they’re not fully codified. And so there’s some uncertainty about how things will work.”
That breeds a certain amount of unease across the board, Levy said – not necessarily a negative thing.
“The difference that I see is that there is a huge amount of public interest and media interest in the campaign commitment from the mayor on planning and zoning.” Primavera said. “We’re hoping to perfect the process that will define and implement the vision for the city. The question is this: Is the process an end in itself? We don’t think so.
“If the process is transparent, and predictable and efficient, and yet people in the community are not happy with the results of that process, will they still be happy and content? Will the process just be a way of saying that we didn’t like some of the decisions made in the past, so the process will be the cure-all for that? That remains to be seen.”
The good news for Primavera? Nutter’s early executive appointments have been fantastic, he said. Cutler and Altman smiled.
Answering Primavera in the Q&A portion of the program, Altman said that no, the process was not meant to be an end unto itself. “We’re trying to move through those major transactions, we’re trying to make those fixes in the process.” The mayor’s demand that Planning be restored to its proper role has been already evidenced by several major projects presenting “information only” public presentations before the commission, Altman said – a “way of early vetting” to prevent the city from being an obstacle as plans move along.
And another thing
The traditional concept of “councilmatic prerogative” has been “the bane of a lot of mayors and a lot of developers,” Primavera said. “If the councilperson from the district doesn’t want [a given project,] the mayor and the colleagues on City Council are helpless, so they say, to do anything about it.”
Nutter promised to do something about it, Primavera said, and he’s going to hold him to it, because it’s just the tip of the iceberg concerning disparities created by City Council as a wedge between it and the Zoning Board, and vice versa. These systems of containment have created mistrust among community groups, multiplying them and emboldening them, he said. The hope is that the new “process” will create an unimpeachable vetting mechanism, wherein even if a decision is wildly unpopular, at least the residents will know that “they should not continue to fight, that in effect, democracy has worked. … I’ll just say, ‘Let’s stay tuned to that.’”
But even with community support and conditions perfect, it has still been problematic, from “inclusionary housing” to big box retail, he added.
Likewise, Primavera said that the PennPraxis plan for the central Delaware River waterfront, sans a “rigid, austere approach” is welcome “as long as it’s flexible and as long as it tries to accomplish something, and not just be a plan for its own sake. But let’s stay tuned on that.”
Change, infrastructure, vetting, and bridges (to Nowhere and beyond)
Cutler lamented a lack of maintenance perspective on all levels of government, a problem that worsens by the day, especially in the current economic environment. You’d think after a catastrophic, fatal bridge collapse in a big city like Minneapolis, she said that people would pay attention, but no.
She asked a favor of the developers and builders on hand. While the new administration has generated a lot of excitement, there is still a profound lack of resources available for the city’s biggest projects, like fixing roads, bridges, rail lines and other services often taken for granted.
“As folks try to figure out how to piece deals together and how to keep financing together, we’d like you to at least recognize that we are under the same financial constraints as all of you,” Cutler said. Outlining her myriad responsibilities (including traffic congestion, emergency response, balancing priorities), “I assume at the end of the day, if everyone is a little bit unhappy I’ve probably done it right.”
The upside is that long-term transportation and aging infrastructure are finally being tied to a newly established city Sustainability Department, she said. “We are back to thinking about transit in a way that I have not heard in a very long time.” Cutler has been a senior executive for PennDOT and the Parking Authority, with forays as the head of transportation and traffic for the cities of Boston and San Francisco, respectively.
The role of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation, she said, “has a very different role than in previous administrations.” Now, operating groups for the city’s transportation and utilities departments are directly under the deputy mayor’s purview, a very different structure, she said. “Within that realm for me is the Streets Department, the Water Department and the airport.” In a secondary role, her “sphere of influence,” is PGW, SEPTA, the Parking Authority, relationships with the Philadelphia Port and the Delaware River Port Authority. “Having influence matters a lot. Conversation and trust really need to be re-worked.”
That goes for the regional authorities, too, she said. “There is nothing in the world of utilities or transportation that does not cross county lines. The roads don’t stop at the end of Philadelphia; the water and sewer systems don’t stop.”
In particular, transportation policies at the federal level are “in flux completely, and really, they will have a long-term bearing on what happens in the next decade with transportation infrastructure,” Cutler said.
For all our differences, we are all Philadelphians
Being a good partner with the private sector means bringing the vision together, Altman said, for coherence and clarity on how decisions are made, resources coordinated, the direction the city is headed and what kind of service and information is being made to the public. Cutler and he face the challenge of meeting Nutter’s vision while “fixing the basics.”
“We have something like 170 business permits,” Altman said, adding that he still does not have a road map for fundamental city functions. “That needs to be collapsed and reduced, simplifying government and making it easier to do business.” Uniform steps for the development process, reliable yes-or-no timeframes and an online presence are a few things to start with.
An official city Office of Business Services is one of Nutter’s ideas that will be rolled out shortly, Altman said. Employees would not just give referrals, but actually be caseworkers, guiding developers and other business owners through the process.
“We’re going to have a new wave of development in the city in the next five years if you look at what’s happening with the expansion of the Convention Center ... the Barnes, the Jewish History Museum, the new Please Touch Museum ... there are a significant number of major institutions” that are part of the “repositioning” of the city in the near-term, Altman said.
Partnerships – such as a new agreement with Temple University to help with their expansion plans and take advantage of the growth to benefit the whole city (a deal also to be announced soon), only make sense with this kind of anticipated volume, he said. “Leveraging and maximizing” the opportunities is the key, and in terms such as those, with some frequency, there was no doubt to his claim that he’s been on both sides of the planning and development divide.
Employer-assisted housing is one item on a checklist of many, he said. Actual, meaningful public-private partnerships make things happen. And marketing. According to Altman, a native but living and working elsewhere for 20 years, Philly’s inferiority complex is evidently alive and well, like a trick knee: “Wherever I go, the first thing they do is bad-mouth Philadelphia. It’s unbelievable. We have to change that image. The mayor is the best asset – [he’s] an incredible salesperson for this city.
“Internationally, we have a presence with international institutions – Temple, Penn – we’re all over the world. We need to exploit those opportunities.”
Altman honeymoon over?
People have been talking about Andy Altman since his arrival six months ago, but only over the past two weeks have there been some questions asked about his workload, and a possible perceived conflict-of-energy between his jobs as the city’s head of planning, economic development and commerce.
Three senior planning and economic development specialists, all of them independent of each other and all of them asking not to be named, said they believe Altman is doing a fine job so far, but that perhaps he has too much on his plate.
Unattributed sources have their place, but not really in this context, so we gave Altman the choice if he wanted to address it. If not, well – no name, no airtime. But he didn’t hesitate.
“Lots of cities do this,” he said of his multiple duties. “It’s not unusual to have planning and economic development under one [person]. We’re also in a start-up mode of operation. I think a lot of that is going to change in terms of balance, because you’re going to have [current vice chairman] Alan Greenberger at the Planning Commission [as the new executive director, starting in November].
“In terms of concerns about, can you do planning and economic development, absolutely,” Altman said. “Particularly if you have someone as strong as Alan coming on board who is going to run the Commission.” That means “I’ll be able to focus a lot on commerce and the economic development side of the equation.”
Altman is unsure if he’ll stay on as chairman of the Planning Commission once Greenberger takes over, and indeed Greenberger has taken over many of the commission’s meetings since January, when Altman was either not present or called away, during the meeting, to beat feet back to City Hall for yet another meeting where the mayor wanted him present.
“Look, it’s a big agenda ... It’s a broad piece of the government that you’re rebuilding. A natural part of the start-up is building your team, but I don’t think there’s a distraction between commerce and economic development.”
He said that on Thursday, for instance, there was an important milestone for the South Philadelphia Produce Market move, which required a large amount of time and moving parts. “It’s not as if projects’ aren’t getting done, or not getting announced. I haven’t found that there’s a conflict.”
The Unisys sign dust-up (which came up at Thursday’s ULI meeting), he said, is not the result of diverted attentions, either. Rather, it was normal community opposition to plans by the business community, which – in this case – he and Nutter found unfortunate. “But that’s not a reflection of [not] focusing your priorities, because we’ve put a lot of time and energy into that.”
The denial of the sign by the Zoning Board of Adjustment was a reflection of things running as they should, he said, not a lack of focus – though the episode could well end up in a change of language for signage in the new, developing zoning code, he told the audience. Altman said they’ve been talking and meeting with officials from Unisys regularly since the decision, including Thursday. He cited other examples of the Commerce Department’s current priorities that have not grabbed as many headlines or involved a company’s international headquarters, but were significant nonetheless.
During his address to the ULI crowd Thursday, he said Nutter’s deputy mayor structure was working well, “particularly in my case ... to look at systems that have been disconnected and to try to connect them, so you have the planning world, the permitting world, the economic development world and the workforce world, which all kind of existed – even within them – in sort of parallel universes.”
Everyone seemed to know exactly what he meant.
Contact the reporter at thomaswalsh1@gmail.com
