General Road and Highway Discussion

[zanate]

Ok.

I think you know what I'm saying, though - it's kind of a dick move to just buy up property that is prime and then not do anything with it. It doesn't further the community at all. It just looks awful and holds up anything else from happening. Like those two plots of land next to Kitchener City Hall. Sure, it's theirs, but that didn't stop a massive public outcry about how awful it is that they're there.

Dick move, but legal and even rational.

So how do you make it either not legal or not rational? It's hard to legally compel anyone to develop a property. You can't legislate profitable development.

What you might do is make it irrational to let a (potentially) productive property sit fallow. In the case of downtown Kitchener, having a way to calculate the potential value of a property and factoring that into the taxes for that property would pressure the property owner to do something with it, to either get off the pot or... do the other thing. It would help speed up development of open parking lots and reduce the incentive to demolish underused buildings for tax savings.

(It might have negative second-order effects though. Someone wants to build a development that's high value? Might see opposition from all the neighbours who are afraid of it showing how they're underutilizing their own properties.)

Anyway, could this apply to Preston Springs? It's harder to justify that this property has a productive use than something in a downtown core. If you try too hard, all you do is make a property valueless because it's so encumbered by obligation. It's like having a brownfield requiring cleanup: it's not worth buying even for 1 dollar because you have to invest millions before you can do anything with it.

So much for the stick. What about some carrots?