Some of the right-wing thugs that have the loudest voices in Arizona want to recall Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon for being too soft on illegal immigration. Gordon doesn’t have anything to worry about, even with the ridiculously small numbers needed to get an initiative started.
If anything, Gordon’s cautious temporizing over Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s war on the poor — before criticizing it before a Hispanic audience — should earn a recall effort from the 34 percent of Phoenicians who are Hispanic and mostly American citizens (and those are 2000 numbers). But of course one reason the thugs rule is the populations that outnumber them, whether moderate Anglos or Mexican-American citizens, lack their lunatic zeal and often don’t even vote.
As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the illegal immigration problem is because 1) Arizona is a border state; 2) has a low-end economy dependent on low-wage illegal immigrant labor, and 3) is doing nothing to really address the issue. Gordon, however, is in the spotlight, in his second term as mayor, and it’s fair to ask a question of substance.
Has Phil Gordon failed as Phoenix mayor?
Back in 2000, much of the Phoenix elite, such as it was, couldn’t wait to get rid of the graceless, supposedly lightweight Skip Rimsza, so a real mayor could take over what would soon be the nation’s fifth most populous city. And that savior was Councilman Phil Gordon. Let’s state at the outset that Gordon is a nice man who loves Phoenix and was dealt a very bad hand. For one thing Phoenix lacks a strong mayor form of government; he’s just one vote on a jealous council. And the economic footling that Phoenix has become was years in the making.
Even so, as Gordon continues his second term, he will at best be a caretaker for projects that were mostly started on Rimsza’s sharp-elbowed watch. Otherwise, what has he done, aside from trying desperately not to offend the Phoenix status quo? In one lavish ballroom speech, he announced the cornerstone of his administration’s downtown plan: a W Hotel. Never happened. Some heavy lifting was done for the CityScape project, but the renderings I’ve seen look like a modest, shadeless suburban office project — nothing like the transformative urban project that was pitched. And I’ll believe even that when I see it considering the credit environment. Unlike healthy cities, not much major private capital has followed the big public projects.
Meanwhile, the Central Corridor has seen little major investment, in sharp contrast to the experience of other cities building light rail. The bio-medical campus, started by Rimsza (and the kicked-to-the-curb Sheryl Sculley) is far behind as the competitive world leaps forward (compare it to, for example, San Francisco’s Mission Bay complex). The much hyped Gordon initiative of The Opportunity Corridor was never pursued. leaving central Phoenix with miles of blighted land as jobs go to the fringes.
To be fair, Gordon and his staff had to spend endless days playing defense against an extremist, anti-city Legislature on the most basic issues. An already cash-starved city hall was walloped by the downturn. And there’s no sin in being the mayor who sees to completion the projects begun by the (relatively speaking) visionary who came before him. Gordon can claim more motive-force credit for the ASU downtown campus, no small accomplishment (there’s that other driver, somebody Crow?). But is it enough?
Phoenix’s stunted politics mostly reward not making waves. It lacks the normal polity of a real big city, powerful downtown developers and corporate chieftains and minority leaders among them. People with power that demand action. Phoenicians are apparently happy with a bench on the blazing front slab that passes for a porch.
The more pressing question is whether Phoenix could afford such politics at this moment in history. And, deserved or not, history will judge the mayor on that. The local depression, assiduously not covered by the local media, underscores the lack of a competitive, diverse economy. Newer suburbs benefit from the only economy that really matters, building new sprawl. Phoenix’s economic and political power and state shared revenue are going down. This as its poor, low-skilled immigrant population is on the rise, as are the linear slums that were the Gilberts and Chandlers of 40 years ago.
According to the latest government data, the entire metro area’s per-capita personal income was only 93 percent of the national average, ranking it 123rd in the country (Seattle ranked 15th, Denver 18th). We know from other data that Phoenix itself is much poorer. Living costs are not lower than most other cities, either. This trend is a reversal from the Phoenix before the mid-1980s.
Mayor Gordon’s city has no real strategy to address this. And it has dawdled on the one — building a powerhouse medical/research/educational complex downtown — that provide a leap forward. Instead, it’s investing precious political capital to subsidize a mall far out in the fringe of the city.
Such inaction is not surprising.
Phoenix has no strategy to deal with global warming, which will affect it sooner and more lethally than most American cities. It has no strategy to raise its underclass, especially by improving education. It has no strategy to address the looming — and carefully censored — water crisis, aside from eliminating the shade trees that would ease the severe heat island. (The water "saved" just goes to subsidize more sprawl). Transportation has barely moved ahead as gas prices hit records — Phoenix is by far the largest American city with neither intercity nor commuter rail service.
And it doesn’t really matter if people keep moving there or if the weather is hot and the golf good. It sure as hell doesn’t matter how many super-rich live part-time in Scottsdale.
Could a mayor have made a difference? Maybe not. If he or she had forcefully and articulately raised these issues, offering visionary but challenging solutions, taken on the status quo…well, that person probably never would have made it past the primary.
Jon, I wondered what happened to you after you left the Republic. This looks like a perfect fit for you. I have to say, however, that I don’t agree with your assessment of Rimsza vs. Gordon. Rimsza was the ultimate blowhard that allowed city staff to run the place. If any good policy emerged on his watch it is only because he was too busy spawning triplets to pay attention to what everyone was doing. Perhaps this argues for a strong mayor system, I don’t know. Gordon, on the other hand has been proactive about diversifying the Phoenix economy (his current global investment initiative), he has significantly increased the public safety capabilities of police and fire and he is taking the very politically difficult position of defending people’s civil rights by opposing the efforts of Sherriff Joe. All good for the future of Phoenix. We are really yet to see wether the inititiaves brought by Rimza will prove to be better than he was. We can all hope.
Jon:
We miss your passion and insight on behalf of downtown Phoenix. But it seems you’ve missed a lot since you’ve moved away.
I’ve lived south of McDowell for 25 years, known Phil Gordon for 20, and worked for him for the last 7. So I have my biases, but I’ve lived the hopes and frustrations both from outside and inside the system as much as anybody.
I could go point-by-point through your post, taking issue with specific assertions. But let me just talk about how my life is so much different and has so many more options than it used to, all because of what’s happening downtown. For instance, today I walked to lunch from City Hall to a new Jamaican restaurant at First Street and Pierce, a block north of the ASU campus. The friend I met walked from his office three blocks north on East Roosevelt Street. Tomorrow morning, after breakfast at Palette at Fourth Avenue and Fillmore, I will be shopping for fresh produce at the Farmer’s Market at Central and McKinley. Tomorrow night I will probably have a glass of wine at Roosevelt Tavern or Lost Leaf Gallery along Roosevelt Row. Every part of that scenario has become a reality only in the last four years, since Phil Gordon has become mayor, and that is not a coincidence.
Is he personally responsible for any of that? No, not directly. But what Mayor Gordon has been able to do is move from a downtown renewal approach that has been megaproject-by-megaproject to an organic economy that is, for the first time in decades, attracting significant amounts of private capital ranging from mom-and-pop coffee shops and clothing stores to multi-billion dollar projects like CityScape (which, fyi, is already coming out of the ground).
Most significant is the new housing stock that is being built with little or no city assistance – not only the handful of urban highrises, but the smaller 3- and 4-story condo projects along the Roosevelt corridor between 8th Avenue and 9th Street. In addition to the 160+ units completed in the last couple of years, two new projects on Fourth Avenue south of Roosevelt have recently broken ground, even in a very tough housing market.
And that doesn’t even count what is happening at ASU and the immediate vicinity. In 90 days 750 undergrads and grad students start moving into student housing, with another 700 a year later. Two blocks east, the 325-unit Alta Apartments are nearing completion. And the 1000-Sheraton hotel will open for business at the end of the year. That means 3,000 new people in a 2-block radius of 3rd Street and Fillmore, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All new customers for the restaurants, bars, clothiers, and service providers who are setting up shop in the area.
Are there frustrations? Sure there are. Other than the WillowWalk and Chateau condos, there hasn’t been a significant new building on Central Avenue north of McDowell in almost 20 years. I assume that changes once light rail opens.
The number of transients and homeless continues to be a significant negative impact on the downtown quality of life, and we’ve made little progress in solving that, if it is solvable.
We have a shortage of quality affordable housing downtown, both for the working poor and the professors, lab technicians, and support staff that we are recruiting to the university, medical school and bio-medical campus.
Those are real challenges that need to be addressed, but shouldn’t minimize the sea-change that’s occurred. Another example from my own experience – four years ago I made it a point to build into my weekly budget support for those first businesses along Roosevelt like Fair Trade Café, Carly’s, and Calabria Italian Deli. Now, there’re so many places it is sometimes months before I can get to some of my favorites, and I’d go broke if I could! And even worse, to paraphrase Yogi Berra’s old saying, “Most of these places are so crowded, no one goes there any more!”
So Jon, things aren’t nearly as gloomy as you think. Next time you’re in town I’ll take you around to some of the new spots so you can see for yourself.
I just rented out what was an abandoned home that people were afraid to walk past a few years ago to two twenty-something women, an ASU student and a teacher. On the 17th we have a community meeting to determine if we have neighborhood support, and we do, to convert the zoning here, South of Lincoln from residential to mixed use. Members of the planning department personally met me at my house that I’d like to convert to a restaurant and decided to hold this community meeting. The major is doing something right. Downtown is becoming hip, despite the economic downturn, under your radar. When is the last time you’ve visited?
Mr Talton wrote:
“Could a mayor have made a difference? Maybe not. If he or she had forcefully and articulately raised these issues, offering visionary but challenging solutions, taken on the status quo…well, that person probably never would have made it past the primary.”
So true. I continue to be impressed by the quality of Mr. Talton’s insights and writing. Anyone who posts a daily blog item (or two) cannot be expected to consistently maintain excellence, but Mr. Talton comes closer than most.