today and we appreciate your taking the time from your busy schedules to participate in this hearing on urban renewal and small business problems.

I will not attempt to delve into the details and ultimate solutions of our urban renewal program in Atchison, as there are others more qualified who will appear today and cover the situation in its entirety. However, I do wish to pay tribute to the members of our urban renewal board, Mr. Thelen, our city manager, whom I regret to say is leaving us next week for a higher field in Titusville, Fla, former city commissioners and other dedicated citizens who accomplished what seemed at the start to be an almost impossible proposition. What was done in Atchison can be duplicated in other communities if a sufficient number of progressive people will band together and put their shoulders to the wheel.

I also wish to express the appreciation of the many folks in Atchison to you, Congressman Mize, Chet, if I may, my good neighbor, for the very fine cooperation you have given to your hometown. We are surely proud to have you as our Representative in Washington.

I wish to say in closing that we are most happy for our past achievements and will continue to strive for the further advancement of our community.

Thanks again, gentlemen, for being with us, and we will do our best to make your stay a most pleasant one.

Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I know that was right from the heart. Let me make this announcement-we will keep the record open for at least a month, so if you have something to add to your testimony today, just contact your Congressman, and we'll make sure that it will be in the record.

At this time it is my pleasure to introduce the next witness, Alan Thelen, the city manager of Atchison, Kans.

I understand you are going to leave. Your loss to Atchison will, of course, be a big gain to Florida. The floor is yours.

TESTIMONY OF ALAN THELEN, CITY MANAGER OF

ATCHISON, KANS.

Mr. THELEN. Mr. Chairman, committee members, Congressman Mize, ladies, and gentlemen, it is certainly an honor, as has already been expressed by our mayor, for our city to have this hearing here today, and as has been confirmed by your remarks, Mr. Chairman, this meeting was made possible because of the pride that our Congressman has in his hometown and also his determination to involve his constituents in the business of government. It is also a personal honor for me to have the opportunity to discuss our redevelopment program with you.

My remarks will be directed to some of the conditions that existed in our business community prior to our program; a discussion also of some of the major items included within the urban renewal project itself; identification of the flood control projects developed as part of our overall program, leaving the particulars of this for General Warnock, who will visit with you this afternoon. I want to also identify some of the special problems that we encountered and discuss very briefly some of the accomplishments of our program. Since

we have been involved in a great many Federal programs in the last few years, I would also like to make a few remarks directed to Federal programs in general. At the end of my formal remarks I will take just a few minutes to show you some colored slides that will give you a more vivid picture of the redevelopment program itself.

Atchison's downtown urban renewal program followed the devastating floods of 1958. This flood claimed the lives of three people and caused more than $4 million worth of damage in our city. The majority of this loss was concentrated in the central business district. This downtown area was already suffering, as was illustrated in 1957 when your mayor appointed an advisory committee to explore alternate methods of stimulating the downtown district. The community was confronted with a declining central business district, the possibility of shopping centers taking additional business from the downtown merchants, and the loss of business to neighboring cities. However, after the floods of 1958, it was obvious that the redevelopment of the central business district would have to include major flood control measures.

The committee established by the mayor in 1957 explored the possibility of using urban renewal as one tool to rejuvenate the downtown area. However, at that time Federal law did not permit a city to create an urban renewal project in an entirely commercial and industrial area. At that time the law required, as I recall, that 25 percent of the area be residential. This has been since changed.

President Eisenhower declared the city a disaster area on August 5, 1958. This status eliminated the requirement that only a portion of the urban renewal area could include industrial and commercial land uses. Since Atchison officials and civic leaders had earlier studied urban renewal, they were quick to again explore a downtown project in light of the President's decision.

On August 30, 1958, Atchison received an advance grant of $47,000 for planning and survey work on a downtown urban renewal project from the Urban Renewal Administration and the city was advised that a capital grant of in excess of $1 million had been earmarked for Atchison. On September 8, 1958, the first contracts were approved for planning and survey work which gave official status to our project. I just want to recall here that the flood happened in July and early in September we were in business trying to develop a plan to not only clean up the flood, but also redevelop the entire area.

In February of 1960 an acceptable plan, which included the redevelopment of a 14-block commercial and industrial area, was agreed upon by local and Federal officials. By this time the watershed flood protection plan had also been developed. This project, with the flood control facilities included in the urban renewal plan, assured both the HHFA officials and the local interests the project area would be protected from future flooding.

This is quite important, because the private investors did not want to invest their money, nor did the Government until we could be assured of protection from a similar type of flood.

Now that the plan had been approved by the local and Federal officials, it was necessary to issue $800,000 worth of general obligation bonds to enable the city to finance its share of the program.

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Business and governmental leaders along with many other interested citizens worked tirelessly in support of this program. Probably no other issue has so united this community. Citizens were consulted and kept informed on progress of, and thinking on, the planning of the program via numerous public meetings.

Block meetings were held with the merchants of the redevelopment area to obtain their views on the program and to inform them of what the program could and could not do with regard to their businesses. A group of housewives conducted a house-to-house campaign in support of the project.

Mr. HORTON. One of the problems we found was that there has been some absence of public acceptance. I think you have an unusual situation here in that the whole community got behind this and, so to speak, put their shoulder to the wheel. Do you feel that this has made a very valuable contribution to your ability to accomplish what has been accomplished here?

Mr. THELEN. Yes, I do, and, of course, the flood certainly helped at this particular time. We have had two other similar redevelopment projects approved with almost no opposition, and I believe that one of the reasons was because the different local interest groups were able to identify something in this project. The housewives wanted a nicer place to shop; the merchants wanted some parking, and they wanted an atmosphere in which to carry on their merchandising so that sales would be increased. Many of the larger property owners wanted flood protection. There were so many different interest groups that got actively involved because they identified something small with their particular interest and I think the same thing was true with our other two programs.

Mr. HORTON. In other words, in subsequent programs you have had this same spirit of cooperation and information to the public with regard to the programs, and this has been helpful there, too. Is that it?

Mr. THELEN. Yes, and I think one other thing that we have tried is worthy of mention. I would think you are talking partly of the opposition to the Federal programs. We have tried to identify local problems and get everyone well informed of what the problem is, and the alternate solutions. One of the tools for solving these problems is Federal programs. In some cases

Mr. HORTON (interrupting). I wasn't so much concerned about opposition to Federal programs, as such, but we found in our other hearings that one of the elements that has been missing in some of these programs has been the inability to communicate to the people in the area what was going on so that they would understand.

I recall, Mr. Chairman, in Atlanta we had this very problem, and I wanted to emphasize your testimony, how important this was to acceptance of a cooperative program, the ability to communicate with the citizens. I wanted to underscore it because I think this is a very important thing that should be passed along to other communities who will be working in the future to try to develop their areas. Now, they won't all have floods which will create a natural condition which would make them all pull together, but there may be other pegs on which they could hang their hat to get united effort, especially in the smaller towns. I have several smaller towns in my district and they

don't have floods or anything like that, but a plant moves out, for example, and they then get very interested in pulling together to get somebody else there. This helps to stimulate and direct the attention of the public to a program. This is what I wanted to underscore. It is a very important thing for us to underscore. You have been through it. Mr. THELEN. Just one additional footnote to that. I think that the tool that we have used for information is small group meetings than trying to publish information and send it out to read. We have found that if we can involve them in smaller discussions where they can participate, greater results can be obtained.

Mr. HORTON. Have you done that with local officials explaining the program or have you had people come in from Washington to explain it?

Mr. THELEN. I think it is imperative that it be local people, and if it takes 6 months more to get the local officials educated about the Federal programs. I think that's what ought to be done.

Mr. HORTON. You had some education of local officials so they could, in turn, talk to the local people?

Mr. THELEN. Yes.

Mr. HORTON. Excellent. I want to commend you for that.

Mr. THELEN. The opponents to our program during the time of the campaign for the election cited the threat of increased taxes, Federal controls, and socialism as a basis for their position. On election day, however, in 1960, the redevelopment bonds were approved by a vote of 3,753 for and 916 against. This was approximately a 4-to-1 margin. The urban renewal program was officially in the executing stage on August 24, 1960, when the first Federal funds were made available for this phase of the project. The redevelopment program has been responsible for a series of public and private improvements in Atchison and now I'd like to take a few minutes to review these improve

ments.

As planning progressed it became increasingly apparent that a feasible system of floodwater-retarding dams alone would not control enough of the drainage area to provide the desired high degree of protection to the urban renewal area and that the achievement of this greater degree of protection would require complementary measures. The city's consulting engineers, working with the urban renewal planners, Soil Conservation staff, and Corps of Engineers, assumed the responsibility for the design of complementary measures required for flood protection between the downtown areas and the detention dams. Their recommendations included construction of an open way and one-half block south of the central business district which could have the alternate use of parking, and the construction of a storm sewer 7 feet in diameter and 12 blocks in length to divert part of the storm waters around the central business district and to increase the control of part of the storm water as it passed through the downtown area. These measures, the floodway and the storm sewer construction, were both included in the urban renewal project and are today a reality.

flood

The development of plans for the floodway and storm sewers were coordinated with the works being accomplished by the Soil Conserva

tion Service and the Corps of Engineers. The city was the official coordinating agency; however, the exchange of information between the interested groups was automatic and allowed Atchison's program to move quite rapidly in the early stages. It was an excellent example of good intergovernment relations. A flood control project designed to protect our industrial area outside of the urban renewal project has been designed by the Corps of Engineers and a contract for this $4 million conduit will be let in the ensuing weeks.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, could I interrupt?

Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. Yes, Mr. Williams.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Perhaps it should be explained to the members here that the flood problem of Atchison is not caused by the Missouri River. It was water that came down from the watershed through the town to the Missouri River that caused the great amounts of damage. This is what we refer to when we talk about the flood control measures that were taken; it is the watershed.

Mr. THELEN. Yes. I have skipped over that lightly, since General Warnock will show it to you later in pictorial form and I think it will have more meaning to you.

One of the major activities of this program was the acquisition of 91 parcels of land and the subsequent sale of 48 cleared parcels for private redevelopment. All of the structurally unsound buildings in the project were to be rehabilitated to meet code requirements. The urban renewal agency subsequently acquired and sold three buildings that were purchased for rehabilitation, the other buildings were rehabilitated by their owners. It is noteworthy that 67 of the 91 parcels of land were purchased through negotiation and of the remaining 24, eight were settled out of court, leaving only 16 condemnation actions.

Another important part of our project was, in addition to the 48 parcels of land that were sold to private enterprise for redevelopment, 14 parcels were purchased by the city for public offstreet parking. Three parcels were used for pedestrian arcades, and an additional 23 parcels were designated for a floodway with the alternate use of parking. This provided approximately 1,000 offstreet parking stalls immediately, within one-half block, adjacent to the pedestrian mall. The lots have been permanently surfaced, landscaped, lighted, and marked.

Mr. HORTON. Could I ask you a question here?

Mr. THELEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORTON. Do you have any problem in Kansas with regard to acquisition of property for the purposes of constructing parking lots? Mr. THELEN. No. The city can do this without a Federal program. Mr. HORTON. You have the authority locally to acquire, by condemnation, property for parking purposes?

Mr. THELEN. Yes; we do.

Mr. HORTON. This was already on the books and it created no problem?

Mr. THELEN. We actually used, in this case, the authority under the Federal urban renewal statute, but for about 15 years Kansas cities have had that authority. It has been actively used throughout Kansas in cities of our size.