Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Lost opportunities

My chief goal in writing the Phoenix 101 post about the old city was to dispel the notion that “there’s no history here,” spoken by the transplants as they file into the tract houses of their so-called master planned communities. More, to fight the canard that “Phoenix has no soul.” Well, maybe now in most places, but it wasn’t always so. Yet the post was so popular, it seems logical to follow up with a brief history on choices made and opportunities missed.

It’s important to make a distinction. People have sometimes dismissed my observations with words such as “well, everyplace changes” and “my hometown isn’t the same any more, either.” At the risk of being pedantic, that’s not my point. First, while every place changes, it doesn’t necessarily change mostly for the worse. Cities such as Seattle, Portland, Denver, Charlotte, San Diego and even Oklahoma City have undergone massive changes. Yet they have managed to preserve and revive their center cities, their civic spaces and enhance livability (and they have plenty of suburbs, so Phoenix isn’t special there). I miss the old railroad yards in downtown Denver – but what an amazing city it is now. It’s gotten better. Second, Phoenix is not just any city – so who cares if it’s no worse than Fresno or Youngstown? It sold its magic for dross. And its choices have set the stage for crisis, whether sudden or lingering.

Much was out of the control of Phoenicians and their leaders. Phoenix grew large after the City Beautiful Movement, so it lacked many great civic spaces; it was a modest farm town during the 1920s, so it had relatively few art deco towers. Worst of all, it came of age with the automobile, Levittown-style suburbia, and the savage city planning and dehumanizing design ethos of Robert Moses and Le Corbusier. Still, Phoenix made choices. It lost opportunities. Here are a few.

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Central Phoenix: Good, bad, ugly

Because I know the fragile self-esteem of Phoenicians is at stake, let me begin my observations about the state of the center city with the good stuff. I smelled the orange blossoms — even stepping out into one of ugliest urban spaces anywhere, the pedestrian loading zone at Sky Harbor. Many of the Midwestern transplants dislike the scent, which makes me dislike some of them even more. But this small, fleeting thing reminds me of my often magical city that is gone forever.

Some of the projects begun under former Mayor Skip Rimsza and spearheaded by people like former Deputy City Manager Sheryl Sculley, retired Deputy City Manager Jack Tevlin and Ed Zuercher, now a deputy city manager, have turned out quite well. As I wrote before, the starter light-rail line is great. Now lots of places are clamoring for LRT; the trick will be to avoid using light rail when commuter rail would be more efficient. A metro area the size of Phoenix needs both. The Convention Center is such a startlingly attractive set of buildings that you wonder if the design was approved by mistake, given Phoenix's ability to erect such ugliness. The ASU downtown campus, Mayor Gordon's signature accomplishment, is more of a reality, and thus will be more difficult for the Legislature to destroy. The lovely oasis of Arizona Center remains, shady and cool.

Read on if you want to know "the rest of the story," as the late Paul Harvey would say.

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How Arizona can feel good

Random observations from my trip to Arizona:

'Zonies, particularly Phoenicians and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, are always after cheap praise. "Make the community feel good about itself," as the diktat from the Arizona Republic to its "information center" goes. This is usually a license for boosterish fraud and an extended holiday from reality. Real accomplishment must be earned. I saw some of that on display.

    * This past weekend's inaugural Tucson Festival of Books was a wonder. Sponsored by the Arizona Daily Star (what a concept: a newspaper supporting reading and printed media) and the University of Arizona, it was the first big-time book festival to happen in the state. The crowds were large and enthusiastic (people even came to see me speak and sign books). Big-name authors came from around the country. What was most amazing was the cohesive community support behind the event, from the array of corporate and philanthropic sponsors to the army of smiling volunteers. Tucson took its best-practices from the world-class Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and gave the state something magical. It's also important: a community push to improve literacy in a county where one out of five residents is functionally illiterate. Eat your heart out Phoenix.

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To the barricades? Can we find them?

I started out the day cranky and sad. Sometimes it's the little things. A Republic story, apparently confined to the "neighborhood news," tells of a poor soul jumping to his death from the 26th floor of "a downtown office building." Unfortunately for the credibility of the "Information Center," the aforesaid building is the Phoenix Corporate Center, in Midtown Phoenix. (As with many stories now, this does not even include what was once a journalism basic, the Where, the address.)

It's hard to make progress when reporters for the state's largest news organization don't even know where the hell downtown is — and, no, you can't just make up the boundaries because you rolled in from the Midwest yesterday and think Phoenix has no history. It could be worse, I suppose: I've heard radio stations refer to 24th and Camelback as "downtown." A little thing perhaps, but to me another sign of the total civic sickness in Phoenix, this reinforcing of a numbing, disowned, neglected "geography of nowhere." Almost as maddening as the Republic's cloying use of "the Valley." Alas, cities are the 21st century competitive units, and one that doesn't even know its own name (and such a beautiful one, too) won't go far.

And I suppose it's necessary to note the latest scaling back of CityScape, the office project that really is located in downtown Phoenix. Sigh. Every city is being affected by the real-estate bust and credit collapse — but just from my downtown Seattle window I can see five new skyscrapers going up. I won't retread familiar ground about Phoenix's unique challenges downtown. I will add that these major-mega projects won't work when they are built largely on spec, without a real business community that will create demand for such space. (And how sad Wells Fargo put so many jobs in the burbs, rather than downtown, to use one example of how the tiny existing biz community fails downtown). And it's unfortunate that land speculation and the apparent powerlessness of City Hall to do anything but throw down gravel makes it difficult to build more small projects, organically connected to the city scape around them.

In such a mood, I receive this link and read, from the Business Journal, a story headlined: "Ariz. police say they are prepared as War College warns military must prep for for unrest; IMF warns of economic riots." Seriously?

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“X” marks the what?

I suppose it's necessary to note the new downtown Phoenix marketing campaign, based on "X marks the spot" — get it, "Downtown PhoeniX." How much did the brainos at the Downtown Phoenix Partnership pay a Scottsdale marketing outfit for this piece of originality and brilliance? Journalists apparently don't ask such impertinent questions anymore.

At least the insipid Copper Square is gone — a name I warned against when it was rolled out eight years ago and yet was flogged tirelessly and tiresomely by the Partnership — and how much money was wasted on that? Enough to subsidize a downtown drug store? Copper Square? Who, after all, wants to live in a city without a downtown? And what did copper have to do with Phoenix (nothing)? That "branding effort" was mainly confusing. So many times people would stop me on a sidewalk downtown and ask where was "the Copper Square?"

No doubt in a metropolitan area with some of the poorest-educated, poorest-paid people, living in suburban subdivisions and voting overwhelmingly for wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III and the unqualified and dangerous Sarah Palin, there's a need to sell downtown. On the Republic's site, where the lunatic fringe holds court in commenting on stories, the "X" news was greeted with comments such as "Xtra crime" and "Xtra homeless."

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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."

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A familiar problem still haunts downtown Phoenix

I saw a curious headline recently in the Arizona Republic: "Event Center could add life to downtown." Curious, because downtown is brimming with "event centers," from the convention center to hotel ballrooms to (I guess) what’s left of the star-crossed and badly located Bentley Projects. The story was actually sad and illustrative.

If I read it correctly (and one never knows, now that editors have become graphics clerks), the owners of relatively historic buildings at Madison and Fifth Avenue lost the business leasing their space. Now, they "are working to make the Fifth Avenue and Madison Event Center one of downtown Phoenix’s premier spots." (Editors used to prevent reporters from using embarrassing hyperbole; also, is the address in the story correct?). The "center" can be used for "weddings, bar mitzvahs, business corporate outings…" Surely, the next McCormick Place.

At least the owners aren’t tearing the buildings down, an act of city-encouraged vandalism that has devastated downtown Phoenix. But here’s a small but telling example of what holds back the center city: lack of private investment. I hate to sun on ASU’s parade of finishing one dorm tower — heavy lifting in an education-hating state, to be sure. But until a simple older set of buildings such as these on Madison are used by businesses doing daily commerce, downtown will remain an underachiever.

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Copper Square bites the dust, but has anyone learned anything?

News item: A Phoenix business group plans to stop using the name Copper Square
that has branded a 90-block downtown retail-and-office district for
eight years. The Downtown Phoenix Partnership is working with Scottsdale’s SHR
Perceptual Management on a name that will highlight downtown Phoenix as
"Arizona’s cosmopolitan heart…"

Where to begin? Perhaps it’s most telling that the Downtown Phoenix Partnership is paying a Scottsdale company to come up with a name for downtown Phoenix. Such is the fecklessness, confusion and drift that characterized the whole "Copper Square" debacle.

You know where I stand. I wrote against the silly name even before they rolled it out, saying, among other things, that the name of the "district" is already established by decades of custom: Downtown Phoenix. In a city hostile to public spaces, there is no square, and downtown has no historic link with the copper industry. And who wants to live in a city that doesn’t have a downtown? Yet millions of dollars that might have been spent on, say, recruiting private employers to downtown, went to banners and assorted crap saying "Copper Square."

So what will these marketing gods from Scottsdale — apparently there were no companies available in downtown Phoenix (which ought to tell you something of the real problem) say?

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Good news and bad news for the Luhrs buildings

As is so often the case with downtown, there’s good news and bad news.

Hansji Urban of Irvine, Calif., will apparently renovate the Luhrs Tower and the Luhrs Building in the block on Jefferson between Central and First Ave. These are among the few large buildings left from old Phoenix. The Luhrs Tower is a wonderful deco baby skyscraper. Phoenix might have had more if the Depression had not intervened. Afterward, the city was cursed with horrid international boxes.

The bad news? The developer apparently has the right to tear down the arcade that connects the two, and an adjoining building that faces Central.

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