Magazine
Special Report: Anchor Institutions
For the past ten years, the media has been heralding the comeback of American cities. First in the rise of downtown housing in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and others, where singles and childless couples have flocked. Next, it trumpeted two massive, privately-sponsored, mixed-use redevelopment projects—L.A.’s $2 billion Grand Avenue plan (centered around Walt Disney Concert Hall), and the $2.5 billion L.A. Live (built around the Staples Center sports arena)—which help create a “heart” for downtown L.A.
Somewhere in the bodies of these stories is a common theme. New downtowners are choosing urban life, with its myriad opportunities for entertainment, education, excellent health care and recreation, because of a city’s anchor institutions.
Anchor institutions are universities, hospitals, sports facilities, performing arts and other cultural facilities (like museums and libraries) public utilities and some large churches and corporations. Although grouped under this single label, they differ in their reasons for being in a city. A performing arts center draws on a region’s audience; a longstanding corporation may see the city as a crucial part of its identity. An anchor may be in place for historic reasons, or may move or expand into a city to take advantage of a central location or subsidies. Serving as engines of urban renaissance (or even survival).
In many places, they are magnets for economic development. Their direct impact derives from their landholdings, their capacity as large employers or revenue generators, their sway as goods and services purchasers, or their heft as centers of human capital and economic activity. Indirectly, they contribute to urban reinvention and civic pride. They attract coveted knowledge-industry workers and suburban spenders. They fill important vacuums, as footloose industries have fled cities to suburban campuses or even out of the country. Anchor institutions are frequently the leading employers in their cities. Even in New York City, 11 of the top 25 private employers are anchor institutions, with the New York Hospital-Presbyterian Health Care System heading the list. In 2006, the Big Apple’s anchors supplied 43 percent of the top 25 list’s total employment.
In many cases, anchor institution leaders have become important players in
urban revitalization. University of Pennsylvania administrators, for example, understand that their fates are closely tied to the health and well-being of their neighborhood and the city of Philadelphia, and they have devised broad development strategies that take into account local employment, crime prevention, greening, and sanitation. Arizona State University and Cal State in San Francisco have located new facilities downtown and thus serve as critical elements in their cities’ overall redevelopment efforts.
And yet institutions seeking public funding for their activities frequently inflame locals. Most controversial are sports teams that clamor for millions of dollars for new arenas. Research has shown that sports venue costs frequently exceed their benefits. While some cities have refused to offer sports facility subsidies, most still offer them in one form or another. City planner Arthur C. Nelson of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Studies Center argues that, because stadiums continue to go up, politicians should pay more attention to location decisions. Looking at data from more than two decades of stadium and arena construction in 25 metro areas, Nelson found that putting facilities downtown or on a downtown edge had far more beneficial effects than locating them in the suburbs. Downtowns, he says, offer more opportunities for pre- and post-game spending.
Anchors present complex political issues for city officials. While the institutions are not shy about lobbying for project support, they do not have concentrated voting power. More often than not, their activities, especially expansion, provoke intense local opposition, echoing through mayoral offices and city council halls. In the following stories, TNAC begins to unpack the social, political and economic issues that today’s anchor institutions engender in cities.
This article appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!
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