Once again, it's left to homey to sun on the parade. People will once again conclude that I "hate Arizona."
Novawest, a "boutique real estate developer," has rolled out, let's call it an aspiration, to build a 420-foot-tall observation tower in downtown Phoenix. It is being likened to the Space Needle in Seattle, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2012. More about that in a moment. The developer has no financing. It has completed no project in Arizona. "But Novawest leaders are optimistic." The renderings — and I understand this is to be an open-air affair? — looked really hot, and I don't mean sexy. If every rendering proposed for downtown and the Central Corridor had been built, central Phoenix would resemble a five-mile slice of Manhattan. But let's give Novawest the benefit of a dreamer's doubt and get down to cases. [Jim Kunstler does, after his fashion, naming it the January Eyesore of the Month].
First, the Phoenix skyline is abysmally dull aside from the Viad Tower. But the combined power of the People's Republic of Sky Harbor and lack of capital, headquarters and civic leaders with means has thwarted anything better. Want some visionary skyscrapers? Go see my friend Will Bruder, architect of the central library. He's got some designs that would vault Phoenix's skyline to world prominence. But, again: Capital, headquarters, civic leaders with means. Without that combination, great civic acts are difficult. For example, Viad was built by the old Dial Corp. as a signature world headquarters and a gift to its city. Dial is gone as an independent headquarters, just another office in Scottsdale.
One could argue that Phoenix would be better served by a lesser skyline, with lots of four-to-six story buildings clustered in a lush, shady core — let the mountains be the skyline, with the tallest building a lovingly maintained, five-star Westward Ho Hotel. Alas, that train left the station in the mid-1950s. Phoenix had a chance to have an architectural landmark with the new city hall. Leaders settled for the mediocre midrise that architecturally gives the finger to south Phoenix.
Towers are abundant worldwide. At 2,772 feet, the Tokyo Skytree is the tallest in the world. These usually have a function besides delighting and feeding visitors; usually they are nests of broadcasting and other communications equipment. As for restaurants and observation towers, Dallas' Reunion Tower, opened in 1978 and attached to the Hyatt Regency, is a landmark somewhat similar to what Novawest seems to have in mind. It is 561 feet, long ago was eclipsed by Dallas' towers, but still glitters like a cotton ball at night. Still, it offers little better views than the Compass atop the Phoenix Hyatt. The proposed Phoenix Tower would actually be shorter than the Chase Tower (built as Valley Center, a corporate headquarters and gift to its hometown by Valley National Bank).
Comparisons with the Space Needle are unfortunate, unless they lead to a deeper reflection on what's missing and needed in Phoenix for it to succeed beyond architecture. It's similar to cities and towns opening little gatherings of stalls and proclaiming they "will be like Pike Place Market." Er, have you ever been to Pike Place Market and do you understand the decades of hard work, private stewardship and public investment required to keep it thriving?
A few observations about the Space Needle (605 feet tall): It was part of the 1962 World's Fair, the second such exhibition (after the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition) that Seattle has created. Seattle even beat out New York City for the 1962 slot, ensuring world participation. Phoenix has never hosted a world's fair. The fair, monorail and the Needle came about through a remarkable combination of civic pride, audacity, salesmanship and stewardship. Seattle had, and has, a real economy to back this up. Fifty years later, the Seattle Center, site of the fair, is going strong; the edgy architecture of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is nearby. So is the urban tech campus of South Lake Union, served by a streetcar. And Seattle lucked out with the Needle's design, gaining a graceful icon
during a time of architectural conformity to the (way, way) overdone
International style.
So, just to be clear, I wish this aspiration well. But it will be no Space Needle. That doesn't mean that the city couldn't learn from the best practices in Seattle and elsewhere, rather than just hoping for more people and more subdivisions. Which brings us back to capital, headquarters and civic stewards with means. Plus a relentless focus on livability in the core at ground level.
Phoenix space needle to be in the shape of a Sajuaro with two arms. Arpaio plans on an office at the top. The better to keep an eye on the help at the revolving Cactus Candy restaurant featuring Americas Tacos. With a signature, Mucho Grande Burro called the Hendershott.
I clicked on “lets call it an aspiration”
And was unable to read the article without paying money. Do people actually pay money to get that site, AZCentral?
According to the Danish architect who designed the thing, it will have an open-air area outside of the glass walls that enclose the interior space.
https://www.big.dk/#news
Not sure if I like the design, but I like the concept. Surprised that some developer isn’t touting this thing for far East Mesa or similar exurb to help create the next new downtown.
Happy Holidays!
This building looks like the one Ed Abbey destroyed in the “Good News”
I don’t do holidays, but I’m feeling Rogue-ish, so…
Happy Day, everyone!
Petro, May THEIR GOD dump greyish empty Hollow Days upon your SOUL.
I’ll buy you coffee sometime day. As soon as I get moving. Starbucks is OPEN
Just what do they plan being “viewed’ ?????
J,M & J – – they can call it “Disappointment Heights.”
Effective 1/1/2013
This blog will be renamed – Grumpy, Grumpier, Grumpiest Old Men.
“A pen warmed up in a heating pad”
The Seattle Space Needle was built fifty years ago at a time when space-age imagery occupied the imagination of the nation and tallness in architecture was regarded as a thing of value in itself, an expression of man vs. nature engineering prowess. It fit in perfectly with the futuristic 1962 World’s Fair it was built for, and has no doubt served as a minor if enduring attraction for those visiting Seattle for other reasons.
Too many city leaders in Phoenix and vicinity confuse gimmicks with development. They pay irresponsible sums to public relations firms to develop “branding” schemes involving little more than a silly, forgettable name or motto for the downtown or some other area, and a few color-coordinated street signs. This fools nobody except the pointy-haired bosses who spend their leisure hours reading motivational “leadership” books on their Kindles (or more likely, listening to condensed audio versions of them).
I nominate “cal Lash” for the title of “Grumpiest”.
I second that nomination.
(:-)
BTW, if we’re going to change the blog motto, how about: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty Kooks!”
I’ll open the nominations for Dr. Zeus with Elliott Pollack, not because I have anything against him personally, but because he seems to be the bete noir of many commenters.
Or, “bete noire” if you fussy types insist on correct grammar and stuff.
My apologies for the brief hijack but I keep reading in the newspapers that the United States is poised to overtake Saudi Arabia in oil production, so I did a little Internet research and thought I’d share my results.
Here’s a graph from the EIA showing U.S. crude oil production over the years:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=A
Isn’t the little uptick at the end just adorable? Note that the peak was in 1970 at 9,637 thousand barrels of oil. In 2011 the output was 5,647 thousand barrels.
Saudi Arabia’s output of crude is shown in a graph here:
https://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=sa&product=oil&graph=production
The source is the same (EIA) but the EIA’s own webpage on Saudi Arabia was stubbornly offline at this time. The output in 2011 was 9,475 thousand barrels.
So, obviously, the United States increase in crude production is both tiny and unlikely to bring it anywhere near Saudi Arabia anytime soon.
This means that the headlines are trumpteting something else: not crude oil production but crude oil plus other things.
Another EIA graph and discussion of the subject shows that the United States narrows this huge gap through “natural gas liquids”, “other liquids”, and “refinery processing gain” rather than crude oil production. Saudi Arabia has a smaller output of natural gas liquids and almost no output of other liquids, and no refinery processing gain (which is substantial for the U.S.). The graph:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=9290
Ah haha!!
Oh christ…bwahaha! (Am I at least in the running?)
Bingo. Anything to help catapult the propaganda…
This was my take on the oil hype:
https://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019735950_biztaltoncol25xml.html
“Where is the outrage?” indeed.
I’m at least heartened that most of the commenters to your ST article seemed to get it, Jon (and the ones that didn’t exhibit pretty obvious logical deficiencies.)
From an oil engineering professor:
https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.de/2012/11/peak-what-peak.html
After doing away with the new oil independence myth, he says this:
Also, the latest IEA report that somehow projects the US to be the top oil producer in 2030 or what not also assumes that Russian and Saudi production will fall – a not so pleasant assumption.
More graphs and pictures:
https://crudeoilpeak.info/us-still-needs-to-import-50-percent-of-its-crude-oil-requirements-despite-increasing-shale-oil-production
My favorite commenter’s name came on a recent post for Phoenix 101: Sky Harbor — Alwaysabride’smaidneveradonette
If you went to Coronado High School, you get the joke.
Returning to the issue at hand and adding to Emil’s post: ‘outlandish’ architectural proposals like this are regularly floated as a marketing device. Just head over to The Atlantic Cities or similar publications where renderings of such theoretical projects turn up every other day to stimulate the design-conscious bohemiate. The boosters probably don’t understand any of this but they do sense that ideas like the above-mentioned floor lamp represent an important part of the bling-bling spectrum.
Sometimes those things actually get build. Nowadays mostly in parts of the world that have money to burn and want to climb the world’s social ladder. Those projects are, in either imaginary or physical form, about attracting attention.
I remember as a kid the big to-do about the new Patriots Square downtown that was going to shoot laser beams into the sky. I think the laser worked for a few months, then busted – never to be repaired. I never got a chance to see it (my parents rarely took me downtown from Maryvale).
I saw what NYC did after 9/11 with the laser lights where the towers once stood. Breathtaking. Phoenix missed a chance with Patriots Square. When I grew up, I actually kind of liked the square. I sometimes went to the Wednesday farmer’s market there when I worked downtown. Now the park is gone, replaced by charmless, hot CityScape. I’m probably one of the few who liked the little lawns, curving red brick paths & planters of Patriots Square better than I like CityScape. The garage under it was kind of creepy, though. Defendants, witnesses and victims in the same court cases would sometimes all end up parked down there. Talk about fright and tension!
I don’t like this new tower concept. I think the proposed CanalScape (https://canalscape.org/) project would do so much more for Phoenix than this silly tower.
The best views of Phoenix already exist from a prime and city-owned location; Tovrea Castle. 360 degree views, wonderful surrounding landscape. The tower idea sucks.