6-story, mixed-use building produces 100x tax revenue per acre of large, single-use building

From Atlantic Cities writer Emily Badger: "An old JCPenney in downtown Asheville, sat vacant for 40 years before Joe Minicozzi’s firm bought and remodeled it.  It's now home to a beauty salon in the basement, retail on the ground floor, offices on the second floor and 19 condos above.  In 1991, the taxable value of this vacant building was just $300,000.  Now, this property that sits on one-fifth of an acre is worth $11 million. "Asheville has a Super Walmart about two-and-a-half miles east of downtown. Its tax value is a whopping $20 million.  But it sits on 34 acres of land.  This means that the Super Walmart yields about $6,500 an acre in property taxes, while that remodeled JCPenney downtown is worth $634,000 in tax revenue per acre.

"'We really are kind of preachy, because we know it works,' says Joe Minicozzi, who has performed similar tax studies in 15 cities across the country [mostly for the Sonoran Institute initiative About Town].  Full article here.

From Better! Cities & Towns writer Robert Steuteville: "An analysis by Joseph Minicozzi of Urban3 in Asheville, North Carolina, shows that on a per-acre basis, dense, mixed-use development far outstrips the value of lower density, single-use development.  In a dozen communities, a shopping mall or strip center produced an average of $7.80 per acre in property taxes.

"By contrast, denser, more urban kinds of development provided much greater financial returns for their communities.  Two-story, mixed-use development generated $53.70 in property taxes per acre.  Three-story mixed-use generated $105.80 in taxes per acre.  Six-story mixed-use was best of all: $415 per acre."  Full article here.