Q&A With NIMBY Expert Frank Noto
Expertise, Due Diligence Can Minimize Clashes Between Developers and NIMBYs
BNA:Do you think it would be fair to say that your mission is liaison between local residents and real estate developers?
Noto:When we are being cynical we say we generate spontaneous support for controversial projects. In a nutshell, we are a full service public affairs firm and we help win community and political support for controversial real estate projects, or projects that sponsors believe may become controversial. They want to avoid NIMBY opposition, or they want to overcome it, or they want to reduce it. Most of our clients are private-sector and nonprofit developers. We do occasionally work with a variety of others, [like] coalitions or trade associations, city or government agencies, or unions.
BNA:Is yours a huge, under-reported profession?
Noto:I think there are a lot of people doing it. They may be architects and they may be attorneys or general public relations agencies, but we are kind of unique. There are only a couple or three firms who provide this service to project sponsors pretty much full time. NIMBYism is a problem nationwide, and it’s not just in our country. It has spread to some of the other Western European countries, particularly where there is a lot of local democracy in place.
BNA:Can you name a couple?
Noto:Canada [and] Great Britain.
BNA:Do you think that there should be certain “protected towns” that simply do not allow chain stores to come in? I believe the term is “Formula Business Regulated District.”
Noto:I would distinguish between the two. It’s probably not legal in many areas to say, ‘OK, you are going to get more business than anyone else, therefore we will not allow you to come in.’ That would be a restraint of trade. So what happens instead is that local governments will establish a burden of proof that a store or a facility is going to be beneficial to a community, and that’s pretty fair, in my opinion.
Now, sometimes they will go beyond that. They will say, ‘You can’t be over 5,000 square feet.’ Some of those restrictions may be unfair, but we work with whatever the local environment is. Candidly, I don’t have a problem with demonstrating that a facility is going to be beneficial to a community, that it is going to provide jobs … that it is going to provide a needed service.
BNA:Is that, however, something your clients are going to have a problem with?
Noto:Yes, that is a possibility. But again, most local areas do not say, ‘We don’t allow chain stores.’ They simply try to establish a very high burden of proof that it is going to be helpful. Therefore, what you have to do is explain that it is going to be helpful. Some clients might have a problem with that, but to go out and say, ‘No chain stores’ is something that I would definitely be against.
BNA:How difficult is it to establish that a business will help a community?
Noto:Some communities will say, ‘Are you going to be creating business opportunities for people? Are you going to be providing jobs for local people or are all the folks who work here going to be coming from outside the community?’ So it depends on the situation.
The Trouble With NIMBYs.
BNA:What is the biggest objection that you encounter from NIMBYs?
Noto:I would say, ‘You are going to increase auto traffic here.’ Typically what happens is that opponents are concerned with preserving the status quo, whereas proponents want to improve the community, and so what’s important is to show that you can mitigate traffic or that you can provide offsetting benefits–[that] you can provide more jobs, more housing or whatever.
BNA:Do you outsource any of that to experts within, say, the field of traffic alternatives?
Noto:Most typically a developer or a project sponsor will work with a traffic expert who will come up with mitigation strategies. Oftentimes the city or the county or the locality will require that you show you can mitigate traffic. But–and I want to talk about this–people oppose projects for different reasons and some of those may be unrelated to the actual facts or the actual impacts. So if you can determine what the real cause of opposition is, you can get a better response.
BNA:Do you mean that people will have an ulterior motive they don’t want to mention, so they hide under the banner of ‘too much traffic?’
Noto:That can be part of it, but basically we see that there are four causes of opposition. One can be loss of face–’You didn’t sit down and talk to me,’ or, ‘I’m important because I’m a nearby neighbor or I’m a former city council person and you didn’t even bother to talk to me. So I’m going to oppose your project and I will get up on my soapbox because that will increase my power.’
Another cause of opposition is misperception–people have the wrong impression about what the project’s going to be. ‘It’s going to increase traffic by 200 percent.’ Well, no, it’s going to increase the traffic by 2 percent. ‘This is subsidized housing.’ Well, actually it’s not; it’s private-sector housing. So if you can change a misperception, sometimes you can change attitudes.
The third kind of opposition, and this is perhaps the most difficult–is [a] moral conflict, people who say you are raping the land. This is natural land and it should not be built on at all. And with those kinds of folks there are no real concessions. If I say, ‘Yeah I’m a rapist but I will reduce my number of crimes to one a year,’ we couldn’t come up with a compromise on that. Moral conflicts are difficult to compromise on, so you have to explain that you share some of those moral values–if you do–or that you share other moral values with those people so they are unable to demonize you. Maybe they will still disagree on something, but we often say, ‘OK, we’re going to preserve 70 percent of this property–this is private property–as open space and we are going to preserve and enhance it. We will clean up the streams and the creeks and by putting fairly dense housing … in, we will be improving the environment.’
BNA:Would those people with moral issues be known as BANANAs?
Noto:They might be. They might not feel the same way about development in the middle of a city but they might be against anything in a rural or suburban area that is going to affect vacant open space.
The fourth type is [the] folk who are concerned about conflicts of interest, so if you can [say], ‘OK, we are going to add five cars to our streets per hour, [but] we’re going to include a rail line to assist in public transit,’ maybe you can compromise. Maybe [you can] go from 40 condos to 30 condos. So conflicts of interest can be negotiated, compromised, but [for] the other kinds of opposition, you have to use different techniques.
BNA:How much power do NIMBYs really have?
Noto:It depends on the structure of the area. For example, we are talking about structural factors like, are decision makers elected by district? How big are the districts? Do they have a tradition of, ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?’ If the local city council member who represents that particular neighborhood is opposed to it, then all the other city council members are going to automatically oppose it, even though they think it’s a decent project.
There are other factors like, do folks have some acceptance of authority and expertise or are they conspiracy theorists and very suspicious of government, big or small? Who are the players? Are the unions important? Is the business community important? Maybe the environmentalists are behind the smart growth project. Who are the folks that the decision makers pay attention to?
BNA:Are NIMBYs born or do they form over years in response to developments that they believe interfere with or impinge upon their lives?
Noto:I think that we have a very complex and changing world and people feel like that don’t have any say-so in those changes. They were not allowed to vote on cell phones, Iraq, regulatory items that caused the economic collapse, derivatives, and such. But this is change. Development is inherently contentious; it is change right where I live and oftentimes decided at the local level. And you can have some influence there, whereas your influence on the policy on derivatives or the war in Afghanistan may be very limited. So people take out some of their frustrations about the change that we see in the world on development.
It goes back to, ‘Are people talking to me? Do they care about me? Are they listening to me? Do I have misperceptions about what this project is going to be like? Are these bad people? Do we have a moral conflict or just a conflict of interest?’ The folks with a moral conflict, well, you are pretty much born with that. You develop as a child your response to authority and what your thoughts are on morality are developed very young in life, so those folks are ‘born NIMBYs,’ or more likely to be. Others are responding to the changing world and to development itself. In other words, did somebody come and talk to them, explain the impacts [or] ask their view on other ways the impacts might be mitigated or changed?
BNA:Many NIMBYs appear to believe they are crusaders in the mold of Jane Jacobs battling Robert Moses. Do you find that to be a major theme?
Noto:‘It’s change and I wasn’t consulted. The outsiders are out to get us, they are out to make their own big profits; it’s a conspiracy.’ That oftentimes happens, particularly if the project sponsor is not local or hasn’t had close links in the community.
BNA:NIMBYs often seem to oppose any development because they have a poor impression of corporate America. Do you know of any organized efforts to educate that group about the nuanced differences between development per se and environmentally friendly developments, such as those oriented around transit hubs?
Noto:[Do] they have a poor impression about corporate America? Well, yes and no. You can get people who are very passionate about how their neighbor wants to build a second floor on their house. That’s not because of a poor impression of corporate America. However, it is easier to demonize multinational corporations in areas that have a more anti-business outlook. What a project sponsor needs to do is show that they are interested in the community and involved in the community and sit down and listen and talk to people about what they are looking for and what their perceptions are and how [they] can work together in some fashion. But if there is a high level of suspicion of your corporation–yeah, you’re going to have that problem.
BNA:Have you noticed that NIMBYs are much more likely to protest high-density development, which often represents sound land use planning, than low-density development, which tends to promote sprawl?
Noto:Yes and no. In general I would say yes. Anything that is going to change the existing zoning or change the existing lay of the land or threatens to change the character of the neighborhood–obviously that is much more likely to be protested. Of course … high-density development by its nature tends to be more environmentally friendly because it means we are going to be using less resources–we won’t have to increase infrastructure as much. If we [are] trying to reduce our carbon footprint, high density is the way to go, typically … so the way around this is to see what the reason for the opposition is. Is it because they see a conflict of interest? Is it a moral value for them or is there a misperception on how dense this is going to be? Or they don’t know how you are going to provide parking, or they don’t know how you are going to reduce traffic? Or is it just that they haven’t been consulted and you are imposing this on them? But yes, in most cases, absolutely, high-density development in an area that is lower density, even if it’s sound land use planning, is going to [be protested] more readily.
The second issue goes to the issue of smart growth, and of course there are smart growth groups all over America. Perhaps the problem is that it is easier to say no than [to] say yes–I think we’re seeing that at other levels of government.
BNA:What is the difference between preserving the character of an area and establishing protectionist barriers?
Noto:Establishing some protectionist barriers can harm a local economy and make it difficult for business owners to thrive. They can increase costs to local residents. You simply need to show you are increasing business opportunities and employment for the local residents.
Developers, NIMBYs, Learn to Concede.
BNA:Are developers typically intransigent or conciliatory about getting their way?
Noto:I’ll answer that question both for developers and NIMBYs. Given time, I think developers are extremely conciliatory if they think there is an expectation that they will lose. They often have millions of dollars invested in a process before it goes before a public hearing, so most private sponsors are going to be very realistic. But if somebody thinks that their expectation of victory is very high, they may be less conciliatory. On the other hand, we try to get our clients to understand that if a particular concession or mitigation is not going to affect [their] ultimate goals … then it makes sense. If by putting in a child care center at a cost of $100,000 is going to win you a strong group of supporters or reduce opposition, then I think people can be made to see that that is an effective mechanism.
NIMBYs also look at their leverage. What’s the expectation of victory? Most are not in to kick up a storm, though there may be NIMBYs like that who are in it because they want to increase their personal power. But by and large people do not want to lose, so if they think there’s a strong chance that they are going to lose, then they are more willing to compromise. But again it depends on their reason for opposition. If their reason for opposition is a conflict of interest, then yes, if they think they are likely to lose, then they are more likely to go with a concession. And again, we encourage our clients to think about concessions or mitigations that are not going to ultimately impact on their goals, but will satisfy the neighbors and help them view us as good neighbors too.
BNA:You have said that the formative stages require developers to pay for, among other things, planning, maps, architectural drawings, and environmental studies. Is there a way to take a plan to the public forums before all that money is invested?
Noto:One thing you can do in terms of getting public support is get public opinion research, and that’s one of the things that we specialize in. It could be a poll, it could be an interview where [we] sit down and talk to 10 or 20 community leaders, people from different walks of life who have some influence in the community, or just average residents who live in the area, [and] find out what they want, what they care about. For example, we did trade-off interviews, [where] we talked to 20 people who lived in a community near a housing development and asked them what was important to them. If we lowered density, could we put in more commercial development? If we increased density but put in a bus line, would that be better? For example, we did a project in south central Colorado. We talked about putting in soccer fields and [asked] would that change attitudes? People were unanimously in favor of soccer fields, but it didn’t change their attitudes. Could we clean up the creek and the environmental degradation–rubber tires and trash in the creek? Well, they liked that too, but it didn’t change their attitudes. What they really liked was that we put in an equestrian trail, which made them feel like they lived in a rural community, and we [showed] pictures of children riding their horses. We [then] got a pretty strong approval out of that community and we were allowed to increase the density, eight times as much as it had previously been zoned for.
That’s called conjoint analysis, that kind of trade-off analysis. That’s an alternative or sometimes a supplement to a survey. A survey can tell you what people want, what they like. Most people in America like the color blue, but that doesn’t mean that if you paint your hotel blue that they are going to approve your project.
Profiling.
We use a system called DISC, and this is a way of evaluating folks’ perceptions of how they make decisions. It is based on creating personality profiles, so we look at whether the decision making style is based on Decisiveness, Interaction, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. So if someone is an accountant and is very conscientious and values stability, you are going to approach them differently than somebody … who gets their opinions from other people, or someone who is very decisive and make[s] up their mind almost immediately. So we do these kinds of personality analyses and use them to determine how you can influence a particular individual–or the swing vote on a city council, for example.
BNA:Do you get professional profilers to do this?
Noto:This is a highly developed profile and we can do these personality profiles on our own. If we are looking for a much more sophisticated level, I do use other consultants that provide this. They are not psychologists per se–not all of them, at least–but the system was developed originally to use in hiring profiles. [If] you are going to hire a new director of finance, you want to know if this is somebody who is steady or somebody who is going to make up his mind almost immediately. So what we have done is we have taken this system and adapted it to use in evaluating decision makers. It can be used in evaluating community leaders too. It’s not a panacea but if you know how people react … you also want to know how they process information. Is this a ‘kick the tires’ kind of guy or someone who wants to read everything? Is it someone who processes information verbally, [and] they want to hear what you have to say, or is this somebody who is going to read every detail? This kind of information is useful in influencing decision makers, helps to develop lobbying plans. And that’s what we do.
BNA:What is the most difficult result developers have expected you to achieve?
Noto:Last week on Tuesday–’Can you get us a bunch of folks to show up at a hearing on Thursday? And we won’t be able to approve your budget until tomorrow, so you’ve got one day to do it.’ So we said that we could try.
BNA:What was the most difficult assignment you have had?
Noto:We did a project–a ski resort–in Utah and we did our homework beforehand. This was a relatively small community–we did a survey and it showed that if the project went to a referendum, we would lose. Of course, that’s not for sure, but it gave a strong motivation to a developer to make some concessions and compromise. At the same time we needed to get the opposition to the bargaining table. How do you do that? We had to have some leverage, [the opposition] had to have some expectation that they might lose. So within a relatively short period of time, we put together a strong coalition, consisting of the business community, neighborhood leaders, folks in the churches, and showed that there was really strong support. And we went out and did our own petition drive with two expectations. One, because people were signing our petition they were less likely to sign the opposition’s petition to put this on the ballot as a referendum. And [two], it also created the impression that there were a lot of people in support of our ski resort. And so the opposition caved in and said, ‘Yeah, let’s sit down and talk,’ and so we gave a little and they said they would be okay with the project. It got built.
BNA:Thatwas your most difficult assignment?
Noto:It was difficult because if we had pushed this all through, we would have lost. Public opinion was dead set against it and there [weren't] a lot of misconceptions about the project. So we had to convince our client and convince the public that the project was supported by a significant amount of people in the community. So you are out there gathering endorsements, getting people to put signs up, in the face of the fact that most of the people in the community [didn't] support this project.
Another very difficult one was a low-income multi-family housing project, in a very affluent area. In fact, it was just across the borderline from one of the most affluent communities in … the country … right next to where [California gubernatorial candidate] Meg Whitman lives. This was low-income subsidized housing for large families … This was for families with four or more kids. We not only had to convince the city council and planning commission to approve it but also to approve a subsidy. There was some opposition from another nonprofit housing group that didn’t want our project to go in because that meant less money for them to build. So what we did in this case was find folks who would benefit from the project–there were plenty of large families within 20 to 25 miles who lined up to get into this housing–and we [said], ‘We will screen you and pre-qualify you to sign up,’ and we recruited those folks to go to the hearings and to go and talk to various groups like the [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] or low-cost housing advocates, religious groups, [and] social justice groups. We were able to narrowly win a victory there.
BNA:Is there a typical time span from the time you get the contract from the project sponsors to resolution?
Noto:I’m not sure there is an average time because it depends on the type of project, the local zoning and the local process and the local regulations. I think our services are typically most valuable before one submits an application or before a project sponsor has decided … ’This is exactly what we are going to do and we can’t make any changes.’ And we do get called in by project sponsors who are in the last three or four months and they can’t really make changes. And we can help them with some things, like public hearing management. We can help them recruit new supporters, but by that time their opposition may already have heard about this. People call us in sometime after they have already had a public hearing, and then opposition may have hardened. It might make it more difficult to go back to people and say, ‘We really want to hear your views’ if in fact the project sponsor is not able to make changes.
But again, it depends on the situation. Sometimes … you’ve got the local decision-making planning board on your side, but if there is a huge crowd against it and nobody supporting it, you’re going to go down in flames. So you need to make a show of support to give the decision makers cover. In that case–you may be able to do that in a couple of weeks or a couple of months. In other situations you want to be in before the environmental studies are complete so you can help shape the project in a way that’s going to be acceptable to the public opinion survey or other opinion research. Maybe it’s just individual interviews, [and] you need more time for that. We have worked on some projects three to four years out and we have worked on others just a month or two.
BNA:What would you like to have accomplished with your work?
Noto:I think we would like to be able to show that we have helped make communities better. In some cases we can provide solutions that work as well for the business community, the project sponsor, as well as the neighborhood, and we have done that in community after community across the United States from Maryland to Maui.
BNA:Are people living on a natural paradise like Maui more difficult to deal with?
Noto:Each community has some unique challenges. Folks who were born and raised in Maui have somewhat different attitudes from the folks who came there only 10 years ago, [who] expect it never to change. ‘I bought a condo here and this is how it should be.’ Whereas folks who have been there for a while tend to be interested in the economy. They want to be sure that their kids will have jobs and opportunities. So all of those are perceived differently by different demographic groups, and of course that’s why you do your opinion research.
Copyright 2010, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.