The City of Piedmont is missing out on saving money — a lot of money. We should plan for some of the new multifamily developments to be located in the Civic Center area. The City could defray most of the costs for needed capitol improvements to the Civic Center with new mixed use buildings — paid for by the developer.
City Hall, police, and fire departments, as well as the Center for the Arts and Veterans Hall could all be located on ground level, with housing units located above. This is good city planning, and would save Piedmont taxpayers money. It is common practice for developers to include city improvements in their projects.
Why upgrade our aging, outdated Civic Center buildings with Piedmont taxpayer money when we could have new state-of-the-art facilities payed for by a developer?
The City hired a real estate economist to look specifically at this issue, and that economist found that this idea would not create any value, and in effect would be an impediment to police/fire buildings redo.