by Donovan Durband on Nov.02, 2009, under City of Tucson, Rio Nuevo, Uncategorized, downtown
17 Downtown Suggestions for the New City Council (even if it’s the same Council)
With the polls closing less than 48 hours from now, here are seventeen suggestions—in no particular order—I have for the Tucson City Council, with respect to Downtown Tucson:
1. Do an audit of Rio Nuevo. Don’t wait for the State to do it. Get all the skeletons out of the closet.
2. Stop tolerating the insider favoritism that’s run rampant.
3. Put more funding into the Façade Program. A relatively small investment in fixing up old buildings makes a big difference in downtown’s image and in facilitating vibrant downtown activity. Façade improvements provide a big bang for the buck. Allocate some TIF funding to the Façade Program. The lawyers have said it’s okay, I know they have!
4. Support the existing businesses that have toughed it out through the hard times. A well-known community leader said to me, when the Downtown Tucson Partnership was forming in 2007, that he didn’t want anyone involved in Downtown up until that time, including businesses, to be part of the new regime. That is so wrong-headed on so many levels. Existing businesses should not be displaced to make room for new businesses if at all possible (especially not seven of them at a time!).
5. Get out of the entertainment business. Stop messing with the Rialto Theatre and running the Fox Theatre. The Rialto is doing just fine, and stop pretending that everything is headed in the right direction at the Fox. Renegotiate the Fox’s loan and insist the Fox Theatre Foundation board add some new members dedicated to fundraising, and encourage the board to operate independently. Let the Foundation hire its own director and other staff.
6. Discourage the further demolition of historically significant buildings and older buildings with character. Encourage new construction on empty lots and surface parking.
7. Focus energy and resources on saving the Gem Shows. Suck up to the Gem organizations as much as needed, although the time for sucking up without action has passed. Which leads right into . . .
8. Build a more affordable, more realistically-scaled convention hotel that won’t put the City’s finances at risk.
9. Hit the reset button on a master plan. What can still be done with the remaining 15 years of TIF? What projects do Tucson citizens consider important? What projects from the original master plan are critical and must be given top priority, and which ones should only be done if there is an unexpected windfall? Communicate this plan to the public. Don’t spend additional money on the planning process, just engage the public, use the available information, and show leadership. Tell us why you’ve decided to establish the priorities you have.
10. Support the development of some student housing—especially along Broadway (on empty lots!). This will create demand for downtown businesses. Perhaps the UA will elect to locate some academic programs downtown as well, once the Streetcar is operational. Everyone says they are in favor of more downtown housing, and this is the most ready source of demand for residential space—college students. This would also take pressure off the neighborhoods experiencing mini-dorm development.
11. Keep pushing forward on the Modern Streetcar.
12. Wash the sidewalks. The BID maintenance crews are doing a good job of picking up litter and sweeping, but the sidewalks need to be power-washed too—badly. An entertainment district needs good security and attentive maintenance.
13. Stop blaming the Legislature for problems that we’ve created for ourselves here.
14. Stop acting out of desperation.
15. Get out of the real estate business, but have a fair and open process for disposing of city-owned property. This is where there is great risk of approving insider deals. Don’t give land away. Downtown development requires that the banks see some comps.
16. Take positive action to implement prior commitments. The Warehouse Arts District is one of those commitments.
17. Think and act “Urban”! Be guided by urban principles, not suburban principles.
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November 2nd, 2009 on 7:45 am
Fix and clean up E. Congress Street, which is a high visibility road through downtown for traffic going east to west. Downtown needs more private retail shops, a drug store and a grocery store. The new marquee on the Screening Room movie theater is a small step forward. And put drought-resistant plants in all those empty planters around downtown.
November 2nd, 2009 on 8:00 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more about making Congress Street a priority; I’ve written about that so much over the years that I decided to leave that off my broken record here. I was shooting for a Top 10 of suggestions, but couldn’t decide on just 10; it could have gone much higher than 17.
I’m glad also that you brought up the planters that are sitting either empty or with dead plants. Thousands of dollars were spent on the pre-cast concrete planters produced by Kornegay Design of Tempe. With the City providing the water, our maintenance crew at the Tucson Downtown Alliance (and then Downtown Tucson Partnership) tended those planters until just over a year ago, but I’ve heard that the City cut off the supply of water and so the DTP stopped servicing the planters.
Given the prominent locations of the planters on the raised medians that abut the roadway, at major intersections, and next to the Fox Theatre, this is not acceptable.
One of the Council Members wanted us to add additional colorful flowers to the planters about two years ago and offered to foot the bill for the extra expense; we purchased the flowers over a period of a few months, planted them, watered them, and maintained them, but were never reimbursed as promised.
November 3rd, 2009 on 7:58 am
I know planters are a small factor but they reflect the ambience of a place like downtown. Take a look at the lovely flowers/plants in the Rincon Market (2513 E. 6th St.) planters for contrast, which invite customers to stop by to shop and eat. Thanks for informing us of why several of the downtown planters have “gone dead.”
November 2nd, 2009 on 10:31 am
I’m down with most of these except No. 10. I can see the benefit to downtown retailers having student housing downtown but what do the students get out of it? The opportunity to shoo panhandlers away every day? Daily exposure to the ravages of drug addiction and mental illness?
Putting students two miles away from where they need to be, the UA, is not good for the students. If you want more downtown residents, continue the gentrification yuppification already underway.
And move the services and shelters for the homeless out of downtown (move them to Kino, we could turn the empty baseball stadium into a homeless camp). Bums congregate where they can get a meal, a bath (which seem to be mostly the sinks in the first floor restrooms of the main library) and a bed and where there is a large concentration of people to beg from. Do what New York did and pass stringent anti-vagrancy laws and enforce them. Then people might want to live downtown and patronize downtown retailers.
Exiling students downtown is not the answer.
November 2nd, 2009 on 7:48 pm
Downtown is not overrun by bums. I’ve spent most weekdays there and many weekends for the last 10 years or so, and it’s certainly better than it used to be. The few sketchy characters I see around Downtown, they don’t bother me in the slightest.
If there is any group of potential residents who would be equipped to roll with the grittiness of a downtown as burdened by panhandlers as you suggest, it would be college students. If I were a college student, I would really dig living downtown; lots of bars, restaurants, music, people-watching, and culture in the area.
There are apartment complexes marketed to UA students much further away than 2 miles (it’s not even that far between Downtown and the UA campus), such as Starr Pass and the one on Wetmore. The UA campus is landlocked while its enrollment increases. The UA can’t grow its footprint anymore; there was just an article in the Star about an out-of-state developer buying land from Michael Goodman, and it has the neighborhood freaked out about a large-scale complex replacing small houses there.
Tucson doesn’t have enough yuppies to fuel expensive condo gentrification.
With the Streetcar coming, Downtown and the UA will seem closer, and student housing would be a natural way to make that connection even stronger.
UA students wouldn’t be exiled by any means. It would be a much more interesting environment for them than some of the suburban locations where student apartment complexes have been built.
November 3rd, 2009 on 8:08 am
What about College Place (student residences) at 1601 N. Oracle (near Drachman)? I see that they are running a frequent van shuttle service for students at the U of A. That’s about the same distance from the campus to downtown. College Place is more isolated from activity than downtown would be for student housing.
November 2nd, 2009 on 1:50 pm
Attract real developers not arbitragers, and those playing the “eminent domain” game.
November 2nd, 2009 on 7:56 pm
Hi Don,
I’m in complete agreement. If you recall, about two-three years ago You and I had a conversation on the begging downtown, I had stated that in San Fran, it is illegal to panhandle within 300 ft of an ATM; effectively clearing out begging downtown. You had reminded me that we do have a statute in place for 25ft. I asked “how hard is it to increase the limit(s)?” What you said then STILL applies: (This from a council member) “We don’t want to appear evil to homeless folks.” Well, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”
We miss you Don and we need you. The all-in-one solution seems to be MORE ALCOHOL. More bars…etc. I volunteer at The Loft these days, am finishing up on re-doing their sound systems, we talked this morning about the Fox. I asked “How do they stay in business? The consensus was “They got a million bucks to piss on, there’s no drive to create a revenue stream. ”
Shameless plug for The Loft here, sometimes it’s better to be hungry.
Anyway, good to see you’re still in town, the minute I can respectfully off my properties, I am gone, gone, gone.
Thanks for the article, Don.
Mitch Marcus
November 2nd, 2009 on 8:47 pm
Mark must be a relative newcomer to Tucson.
I say right-on to Mr. Durband’s list. No one has come up with anything better.
I predict a bit of a change on council come Tuesday night.
Downtowner
November 10th, 2009 on 1:16 am
Don,
You know where that iconic broken tile is right? The one between La Placita and Hotel Arizona? In fact most all of them have been broken for about 25 years. Ward 6 office declared that they would be the first to get some maintenance and beautification for that walkway toward the community center. We have now lived through six, yes 6, 4 year Council terms and no one has yet accomplished this basic task. And we wonder why the Gem Show wants to boogie?
And about the information kiosk that was designed by Jim Gresham and approved by our City Council in 1986! The staff of Ward 6 stated they would get that done too. Some of us remember promises. I guess it is true, “the devil is in the details.”