Agenda - 05-15-2014 - 1 - Laserfiche WebLink

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�i Research Credit: Urba 1 Joseph Minicozzi, AICP Joshua McCarty 2 Vanderbilt Place Asheville, NC, 28801 hapel Hill and Orange County have long led the state in evaluating community design and patterns of growth. The Asheville based urban design analytics firm, Urban3, was commissioned to perform an economic analysis of land revenue productivity normalized over the entire county. This study utilized existing Assessor's data and land area to determine tax revenue with the "land" as a least common denominator metric. In breaking development patterns with this perspective, it provides new insights as to the relative affect of lot density, height, and even matters of design; and how they affect the community's tax base. Urban3 is a leader in the field in utilizing this method of analysis and the results of the study validate Chapel Hill and Orange County's progressive land -use policies. Using property tax assessment rolls from Orange County, the property values with respect to their acreage (i.e. land consumed), Urban3 measured the revenue productivity county -wide. Land is the least common denominator because as an incorporated area, land is all that the community has as a real asset. Indeed, Orange County is an `incorporated' area of land that will not change, and knowing the productivity of land will help decision makers evaluate development patterns in an "apples to apples" manner to determine the effect on municipal coffers. This is also important in the towns in Orange County as they all maintain the value of a rural buffer, which essentially acts as a boundary to community expansion. Additionally, the act of annexation has been restricted in most communities, so cities and towns are essentially seeing themselves as a fixed boundary for the near future. The `value per acre' method is a metric that normalizes across the variety of parcels. Viewing property values on a per acre basis, sets the land development E