In the 1950s, Craig Milum’s dad came to Phoenix to take over a failing laundry business. He turned it around and built it up. Craig started working there in 1963 at age 13.
And he kept working there, including through his college years at ASU, where he met his wife Marilyn. In the late 1970s, Craig and Marilyn took over the business from Craig’s dad. And finally, in 2019, approaching his 70s and after more than 50 years of hard work in the business, Craig retired.
The laundry business sits on what is now very valuable land in the downtown core. Phoenix has zoned it for some of the tallest and densest uses in the city.
In fact, Phoenix wants this area to be a “dense, vibrant, urban mixed-use area that is a center for commerce and high-rise urban living.”
And given all the other private development in the area, including new complexes surrounding it, the land the laundry business sits on is a prime candidate for someone to buy and redevelop into more housing.
Phoenix halts the Milums’ retirement plans
Some 70 years after the family bought it, the property’s value now represents Craig and Marilyn’s nest egg for their retirement.
But Phoenix might wreck the Milums’ retirement plans and their property rights.
The shuttered laundry buildings are old and seriously deteriorating, with frequent break-ins by homeless people. So, for public safety and to speed up redevelopment, the Milums wanted to demolish them.
Phoenix said not so fast. Instead, city employees want to designate the building as historic.
But it is not like George Washington slept here. Instead, Phoenix wants the Milums to save the ceilings — a part of the structure that is only “historic” because its design was so structurally unsound that builders stopped using it decades ago.
Why spend millions on a building they’ll sell?
To do that, the Milums would have to spend millions to rehabilitate the buildings. Additionally, the designation would limit the future use of the property. If the property cannot be used for the dense mixed-use zoning that Phoenix says it otherwise wants, then the property is worth far less, and the Milum’s nest egg is far less certain.
Even assuming that “saving ceilings” is a legitimate use of government power, the Milums cannot be forced to shoulder the millions that Phoenix’s demands will cost. This is not a public health and safety action.
It’s a mistake:To demolish this Phoenix home
A historic designation is not like a fire code or a sanitation law.
And nearly two decades ago, Arizona voters overwhelmingly adopted the Private Property Rights Protection Act. The law requires the government to reimburse owners when new regulations reduce existing rights to use, divide, sell or possess private property.
An example of suffocating land-use regulations
And this fight illustrates another problem with the city’s land-use regulations: They cause higher housing prices.
Arizona, and the Phoenix area in particular, is in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. This crisis, as the Legislature itself has recognized in the “Arizona Starter Home Act” bill that was passed but vetoed, “is caused in no small part due to highly restrictive regulations imposed by municipalities.”
These restrictive zoning regulations prevent the construction of new housing which would, because of supply and demand, have the effect of lowering housing prices. So not only will Phoenix’s designation cost the Milums millions, it will also prevent more housing development.
Phoenix’s Planning Commission voted against the designation earlier in April.
Now it is up to City Council. They should vote against it too.
Otherwise, Phoenix taxpayers will be on the hook for the harm to the Milums’ rights and retirement they spent a lifetime working toward.
In all fairness and justice, if the government thinks that protecting old ceilings is important and desirable, the cost of doing so must be borne by the public as a whole.
Phoenix cannot force the Milums to bear that cost alone.
Paul Avelar is the Arizona managing attorney with the Institute for Justice and Ari Bargil is a senior attorney with the institute. Reach them at pavelar@ij.org and abargil@ij.org.
