After some three years leading the Downtown State College Improvement District, Jody Alessandrine is unambiguous:
If State College does not foster increased density and more redevelopment in the downtown, he said, new development projects — and the tax revenue they generate — will simply take root in the surrounding townships.
Likewise, without downtown redevelopment, the borough will continue to see increased pressure on its residential neighborhoods, where single-family homes will continue to be converted for use as student housing, he said.
‘Mark my words,’ Alessandrine told StateCollege.com, speaking shortly before his tenure as Downtown Improvement District executive director ended last week. ‘ … The borough is hemorrhaging.’
He pointed to public fiscal projections for State College, which forecast worsening financial stress on the municipality if its tax base is not strengthened and diversified. As early as 2014, Alessandrine said, the borough could well see a serious financial mess.
To help avoid that prospect, he said he has been trying to facilitate some communication among people he dubbed ‘stakeholders.’ He hopes that will continue after his departure from the DID on Thursday, he said.
Alessandrine is moving on to become executive director of Downtown Toms River, N.J., a job that will position him closer to his family.
Back in State College, though, he voiced confidence that the long-planned Fraser Centre project will promote the diversification of downtown land use and redevelopment there. He said Fraser Centre — with its expected mixture of office space, owner-occupied condominiums, retail space and a cinema — should illustrate to would-be downtown investors the viability of varied downtown uses.
That way, Alessandrine said, it should inspire more redevelopment.
But the Fraser Centre plans, several years behind schedule, have also inspired a lack of confidence in some quarters. Originally, the DID-supported project, assisted with some government grants and tax-increment financing, was to have broken ground in 2008.
Today, the project site, on the 100 block of South Fraser Street, remains vacant. Developer Susquehanna Real Estate has reported that the rocky economy has delayed the effort.
Earlier this month, Susquehanna noted that it has occupants lined up for about 70 percent of the square footage; it needs to reach the 80 percent threshold before it can break ground.
Alessandrine acknowledged that some pessimism in public sentiment has emerged around the project. But he remained resolute in his confidence that the project will materialize — and that it will bear only fruit for the downtown.
As for the skeptics who question the long delay, he said that ‘I think all they have to do is look at their own’ financial situations.
They should, he said, ask themselves if they have made any financial adjustments since the economic downturn began several years ago.
‘If they are (living the same lives), then God bless them,’ Alessandrine said. ‘But most people aren’t. … Everyone has had to reevaluate their lives.’
The same fiscal realities forcing those personal reevaluations have affected the Fraser Centre plans, he went on. ‘To me — I don’t understand (the sentiment) ‘How come it hasn’t happened?”
Alessandrine also underscored the hundreds of thousands of dollars in new tax revenues projected to materialize from the complex. If someone can say how the borough may grow taxable property to that degree, he said, ‘I’m all ears.’
‘But I think it’s going to be a short conversation,’ he said. ‘ … It’s worth it to hang in there with this (project) because of what it’s going to bring in (taxable) rate-ables.’
As for himself, Alessandrine said it was always his plan to be the DID executive director for about three years — a plan that the DID board knew all along, he said.
Initially, he had hoped to stay in central Pennsylvania beyond his tenure with the DID. But changes on the family front were key in driving his decision to return to New Jersey, where he can continue to do the professional work he loves most — that is, fostering downtown vitality — in Toms River, he said.
The Garden State is familiar territory for Alessandrine, who, among multiple roles there, served a decade as a municipal elected official in Ocean City.
Still, he’ll miss State College, where he has developed friends who are like family, he said.
And ‘the level of professionalism (in the borough) is probably beyond comparison for other governments I’ve dealt with,’ Alessandrine said.
‘I’m going to sorely miss the people up here,’ he said.
Earlier coverage
