Downtown Phoenix update, gentle and honest

The 31-story Sheraton opened in Phoenix this week, to the predictable cheerleading that it will "revive" downtown. I hate to sun on your parade, but my recent visit "home" showed that the central city is still facing mammoth challenges, and that, of course, bodes ill for the economic and social health of the region.

Let’s start with the good news, for we always have to be mindful of "the Valley’s" real-estate-promoter mindset and fragile ego. The thing looks less bad than many had feared; as it was going up an editorialist at the Republic memorably likened it to an overgrown motel by the Interstate. It is absolutely essential to the success of the Convention Center, a business where Phoenix should excel, rather than being an also-ran with Grand Rapids as it was before the expansion.

A modest mid-rise is going up, just north of the Valley Center tower (I use the old name because who knows who will own the bank tomorrow), and at least one at CityScape. Not sure if there are many tenants. ASU has added a couple of buildings and is expanding the nursing college. The Grace Court development is coming along. And light rail is in — light rail has succeeded virtually everywhere in America, so Phoenix will have to work really, really hard to screw it up.

Now, if you feel better you can stop reading now. Or read on for the unfortunate "rest of the story."

I spent a fair amount of time talking to downtown insiders I trust, as well as being on the (superheated) ground. The result is that downtown’s big hopes from, say, four years ago have proved disappointing:

• Private investment, from companies actually doing business in the core, is still tepid. Apparently Chase did a massive downsizing. The Republic keeps cutting jobs. The result for downtown retailers is a dependence on government workers and a disappointing number of ASU students, neither big spenders. This remains the biggest competitive disadvantage in Phoenix vs. successful downtowns. City Hall refuses to make the central core the easiest, cheapest place to do business. There is, apparently, no public-private economic development entity at work.
• The Mortgages Ltd. damage is widespread, especially apparent with the dead worksite at the beautiful art deco Professional Building. In successful cities, this building long ago would have been rehabbed and filled with use. Now, Phoenix has missed another chance. Also, apparently 44 Monroe is proving disappointing, too, as sales have fallen short.
• CityScape? Well, there’s a crane and fenced-off blocks. But the renderings I’ve seen look like modest, mid-rise towers in the homely style of modern anywhere beltway architecture. It’s inward-looking, rather than based on street life, a design flaw that hurt Arizona Center. And it looks hot as hell. This is far different from the transformative, architecturally daring project promised.
• All around the Central Corridor are the flotsam and blight of heavily hyped condo towers that came to nothing but vacant lots. Cielo? Jet? Cosmopolitan? Portland Place is stuck with one building and a long block of nothing. This is the fifth largest city in America. Outside my window in little downtown Seattle, I can see three condo towers going up right now. And that’s just what I can see.
• Nothing seems to be happening to try to undo the disastrous land-banking and tear-downs that have left much of the center city such a dead zone. Roosevelt Row hasn’t changed. In addition to the ugliness, blight and pressure on businesspeople who try to build something in spite of it all, the city has lost affordable old buildings that would have attracted small business.
• Oh, I forget, some city leaders back-when were trying to run the working poor out of downtown. That’s why Phoenix doesn’t even have a downtown Walgreens.
• The shade and sustainability questions loom larger. The city seems to view throwing down gravel the way most people do sex — as life’s greatest joy and compulsion. Gravel is not the Sonoran Desert. Moreover, the center city was never "desert" in the era of modern human habitation. It was shade trees and grass (and, until the 1970s, big awnings over the sidewalks), which have the bonus of fighting the heat island. Now: gravel at every city building — or dirt and gravel at the beautiful 1929 City-County Building that was once an oasis of big shade trees and grass. Apparently the policy is catching on, as the Grace Court offices are surrounded by gravel sure to keep surface temps around 140 in the summer. And, as I have noted, the lack of shade is light-rail’s big vulnerability. This gravel-porn obsession out of City Hall, along with all the concrete and, er, global warming, ensures downtown will remain unfriendly to pedestrians or generally sane people. And so needlessly ugly.
• To repeat myself: the downtown biomedical campus is moving too slowly, if at all, to be a player (hence survive) in the global economy.

If you think all this is "negative," change it. It is what it is. Refusing to acknowledge it and address it is the least "positive" action available. I want Phoenix to be a world beater. But more suburban slums-to-be and lookalike shopping strips, more driving and avoiding the issues of water and global warming and the cost of population growth and a one-horse economy and extremist politics…pricelessly dumb. Nothing seems to change except the outside world and the creeping crisis.

But enjoy the hotel.