Project Highlights | August 2023

The scope and impact of our work has continued to grow this year. Last quarter we shared that two comprehensive plans Verdunity worked on received 2022 Vernon Deines (national) awards from APA’s Small Town and Rural Planning (STaR) Division, and this April the same group announced that our Sweetwater Plan won the 2023 Merit award in the same category. We love supporting small communities! Whether you’re doing your first ever long-range plan like Sweetwater, working through how to reverse population decline like Parsons, KS or preparing to manage rapid growth like Taylor, TX our team is ready, willing, and able to assist you! Dalhart, TX up in the Texas panhandle is the latest small community to bring us on board, so maybe we can make it four award-winning plans in a row in this category!

We don’t just do comp plans for small communities though. We’re supporting a wide range of cities that are focused on improving their fiscal health, affordability, and neighborhood character. We’re wrapping up comp plans for two fast-growing suburbs in central Texas (one of which we’ll also be working on subsequent code updates for), and about to kick off new plans for Gillette, Wyoming and Addison, TX. Our fiscal analysis work continues to be a highly requested service as city leaders continue to search for ways to close infrastructure and service funding gaps and build support for diversifying housing, infill, and incremental development.

Here’s a sample of the work we’ve been doing to help communities quantify and communicate resource gaps; develop plans to align vision, policies and investments through the lens of fiscal sustainability; and support development and infrastructure that supports vibrant and inclusive neighborhoods. Contact us if you’d like to talk about how we can help your community!

Comprehensive Plan

Waxahachie, tX

The City of Waxahachie, south of Dallas along the I-35E corridor, has found itself in the thick of massive growth due mainly to people moving south of the metroplex in search of more affordable housing and high-quality school districts. Verdunity assisted the City in building out a comprehensive plan which should serve to put fiscal analysis at the forefront of future land use decisions. While a historically suburban pattern of development currently is the norm, many decision-makers are trying to reintroduce a more varied and diverse pattern that puts the things that residents want access to much closer to home. The plan, adopted in March of this year, includes, at every opportunity, reminders about how the choices the City makes affect its long-term fiscal bottom line.

Waxahachie 2040 Comprehensive Plan

Land Use Fiscal Analysis and Fiscal Impact Modeling

Josephine, TX | albemarle, NC | Bryan, TX

Our Land Use Fiscal Analysis (LUFA) process helps quantify and communicate the fiscal performance of a city’s current development and service model, and shows how altering development patterns and location can help close funding gaps without having to raise the tax rate. We perform an abbreviated version of this analysis as the core of our comprehensive plans, but we also do more robust analyses and workshops as a standalone service. Over the past few months, we’ve been working on LUFAs for several communities, including:

Josephine, TX is a small community in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex on the verge of rapid growth. Josephine’s leadership is looking to get a better understanding of how they need to manage the pending growth so they can keep housing and services affordable and focus incentives on development that will maximize their residents’ taxpayer dollars.
Albemarle, NC is preparing to update their comprehensive plan and development regulations later this year, and planning staff wanted to be able to have data on service costs and value productivity of different lot size and value combinations to inform how to guide development between infill and annexation.
Bryan, TX is the sister city to College Station, home to Texas A&M University. Bryan has a mix of older, traditional style neighborhoods with aging infrastructure and newer more expensive single family subdivisions. As with many growing communities, there’s a push within the community for larger lots and expansion of infrastructure and opposition against infill and rental housing. Our LUFA work is helping to put numbers to the city’s service costs and infrastructure liabilities so staff can leverage development activity to align revenues, costs, and affordability.

Get an overview of our Land Use Fiscal Analysis process and request more info on our fiscal analysis services at fiscal.verdunity.com. If you’d like copies from presentations and deliverables we’ve put together for these and other clients, shoot us an email at info@verdunity.com and we’re happy to share!

Golden Triangle Shopping Center Retrofit

Dallas, TX

Verdunity is supporting incremental developer Monte Anderson to retrofit this aging strip center in south Dallas. Many of the commercial spaces are vacant and the buildings, parking lot, and public areas are in poor condition. The proposed development will break the parking lot up to add sidewalks and greenspace, retrofit building interiors and facades, and add some food trucks to active the space. The project also includes bike/walk connections into the surrounding neighborhoods and is adjacent to the planned Five-Mile Creek Trail that recently received federal funding. As with all of Monte’s work, the development is happening incrementally and is focused on incorporating the ideas, talents, and people of the neighborhood.

Go Cultivate! podcast interviews Incremental Development and Building Community Wealth with Monte Anderson