Warm and Fuzzy

When it gets to this point of the year, and you don't have air conditioning (which is the cruel fate we have been dealt for this summer), the very phrase "warm and fuzzy" is apt to give you the willies. The sensation against your sticky skin just screams uncomfortable and itchy. But putting that unpleasantness aside, the term "warm and fuzzy" also harkens to a very attractive feeling, especially when it comes to the question of place. Developers trying to sell expensive homes look to the descriptive phrase to entice high-salaried and/or -net worth types to buy into their new communities. Although developers try their best to generate it synthetically, it really takes the organic preexisting character of a locale, or the naturally-occurring trend of a certain breed of newcomers, to imprint the "warm and fuzzy" stamp on a place.

What got me into this disturbing realm? Well, besides the hallucinations of being subjected to over 90-degree heat at night, one recent tidbit aroused my attention. An unusual feature article found its way on the front page of the Sunday Real Estate section of The New York Times. Entitled "Park Slope Parent Trap," the piece explored the reputation of my current home as a place where "scores of 30-something couples who seemingly move to Brooklyn to breed." Comparing her neighborhood encounters to being in a "small country village, or in Australia," the writer's account forced me to hold my head in shame that I've willingly chosen to live in such a place. Prefacing her remarks by stating that she was unwillingly one of those "'annoying parent types'" that populate the area, the writer ended up embracing the warm and fuzzy nature of her home. Ahhhhh. Yeck.

But the attraction of warm and fuzzy places is not limited to a relatively small, self-absorbed enclave of New York City. Take for example the Texas Hill Country, a land with a rugged history, epitomized by one of its favorite sons, LBJ. The man, as president, showed off his gall bladder surgery scars while in office, for God's sake. How could he, too, have come from a land deemed "warm and fuzzy"? Unfortunately, it has come to be. The rolling hills, lakes and rivers of the Hill Country, a region located west of Austin, has attracted this type of crowd, to the horror of those who got there first. As one longer-term denizen noted, "'We just wanted a small house where we could enjoy the land and be left alone.'" After only eight years in his new home with his wife, this Hill Country resident sees the tide of development creeping into the territory. As one economist so concluded matter-of-factly, "'People want to live out in the country.'" Singer Willie Nelson has jumped into the frenzy, selling off a portion of his ranch in the area for luxury homes. One set of newcomers, from California no less, described the draw of the Hill Country for them by explaining that they "wanted [their] children to grow up in a 'warm and fuzzy area' with plenty of Southern hospitality."

It seems that no matter where the next frontiers of development are, be they in the urban center or the urban fringe, the common denominator is the omnipresent and aforementioned warm and fuzziness which I find so hard to embrace. People want that place where they can raise a family. (In the case of Park Slope, people seem to want to live in places where women freely expose their breasts in order to feed their hungry broods). As a newlywed looking to get started in this department, it doesn't seem to be that horrible of a request from the place my wife and I live. Then why does it concern me so? Why do I feel like I'm in 90-degree heat with a cat rubbing up against my leg? Developers spent the better part of the last century trying to impose a uniform built environment on Americans in the form of suburban tract housing developments. Today, developers are ostensibly adapting towards more diverse tastes, providing new offerings in preexisting urban settlements (such as the rehabbed buildings across Park Slope), and on the urban fringe with town center concepts allowing for pedestrian scale activity and community. But does this outlook necessarily comport with all of America? I'm not advocating the construction of unattractive, unsafe places to live, but does everything have to be perfectly polished, clean and bright? Does everything have to cater towards the well-off in child-bearing mode? Variety is a good thing, and "new" doesn't necessarily have to mean "warm and fuzzy." A little grit under your fingernails never hurt anyone -- take a look at LBJ and his scar.

Times Remembered, Times Lost

As a youth, I spent much of my time in Kings Park, New York, a sleepy suburban burg tucked along the northern shore of Long Island, about fifty miles east of Manhattan. All of my family members have since relocated to other places, but for some reason the hometown retains a special place in my heart. Aside from the good school system (which produced such luminaries as Houston Astros great Craig Biggio and members of the metal group Dream Theater) and a relatively good location for commuters to New York City, the other claim to fame for my hometown is the enormous state mental health facility that occupied about 450 acres of prime real estate, including along the water. In its heyday in the mid-1950’s, the facility held over 9,000 patients, and required a small army of workers to man it. When it closed in 1996, the great news, and anticipation, would be what the State decided to do with the property. For several years the belief was that the tract would be sold to developers, and a massive residential and commercial building spree would commence.

In a classic example of NIMBY concerns at work, the hamlet mobilized, behind organized citizens groups. Local politicians joined the crusade to stop the construction. After it was discovered that Kings Park lacked a local sewer system (something that any resident could have told anyone who cared to ask), and that the site had some serious environmental remediation issues, the desirability of the site waned. Still there was potential that the development would occur. Then, just after Christmas, the State announced that it would transfer the overwhelming majority of the property to the State Parks Department, and that the dedicated swath would join its neighbor, the Nissequogue River State Park. As told to the New York Times in a small blip of story in its Sunday Real Estate section, the players in the process were shocked, and had little idea that this would be the result of ten years of anticipation.

This is where the New York Times lost its interest in the story. The writer no doubt had to hop back on the Long Island Railroad and make it back in time for her deadline. But the surprising nature of the pronouncement begs a number of questions intertwined with the land use process itself. Mainly, the State’s foot-dragging in making a determination should have tipped the Neighbors and Town officials that the State was having difficulties trying to convince a developer to purchase the property. If these folks were really involved in the process, wouldn’t they have known?

Beyond this query, the real lesson from Kings Park is that in the pursuit to regulate what can and cannot be done, and what does and does not get built, it is ultimately the property owner who is in control, and everyone else interested in what happens must wait to see what the owner decides to do. It is an actor/reactor symbiosis, and until the owner makes some type of affirmative action, everyone else needs to wait. This simple order of things causes much of the frustration for those participating in the land use process. The waiting can be endless, or in the Kings Park case, ten years, which is pretty long, too. Functioning within the land use arena requires a substantial helping of patience. Sometimes it takes people time to make up their mind, particularly when they’re public servants, and particularly when the decision involves the future of an entire town, no matter how much ink devoted to it by the New York Times.