Meet Me Downtown

There is an old expression that goes something like: “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

Earl Wettstein's Big Hat: a 2006 concept for a Wild West Museum in Downtown Tucson

For Downtown Tucson, there has certainly not been a failure to plan. The questions for the Tucson community might be, “Did we fail to plan wisely or strategically? Did we fail to follow our plans with action? Did we plan too much? Were our plans economically feasible or were they just pretty pictures? And perhaps, “Should we thank our lucky stars that we failed to follow through on some of our plans over the years?”

Architect, artist, and former downtown restaurateur Bill Mackey has assembled Downtown master plans for an exhibit that may help answer some of those questions, and the exhibit opens tonight in the empty corner of the former McLellan’s store at 63 E. Congress St. The exhibit will have a soft opening on Friday, October 2, from 4-7pm, and have a grand opening on Saturday night from 6 to 10pm, during Club Crawl; then, 6-10pm the next three Saturdays–October 10, 17, and 24.

In “+-92: Downtown Master Plans, 1932-2009″, Mackey and colleagues Julie Ray, Rachelle Diaz, and Kimi Eisele will be exhibiting a retrospective of more than 100 master plans that includes comprehensive plans for the entire downtown area, area plans, studies, and site-specific project plans.

Some plans were more philosophical or topical than geographic in nature. Some became the basis of public policy for decades; others collected dust on a shelf. Before there was Rio Nuevo, there was El Centro; before that, urban renewal, and before that . . .

Mackey has tracked down diverse artifacts of the voluminous planning that Tucson has inflicted upon itself over the last three-quarters of a century, gathering plans from government archives, libraries, and the collections of historians and architects.

I met with Mackey and his committee a few months ago, and helped select the title to the exhibit.  The number 92 was selected rather arbitrarily, because, as Mackey observes, “there’s no way of knowing just how many plans there have been.”

By that time, Mackey had collected nearly 100 plans, not all of which could be called “master plans”. He had spotted some trends already;  plans have often reflected the values and priorities of their times.

“In the 1970s, the federal money was there for housing, so that’s evident in all the planning to grab federal funds and build housing,” says Mackey. “Now it’s all oriented towards transportation, so the planning reflects that.”  It’s safe to say that some planning concepts have been cyclical in their popularity.

While it’s easy to imagine such an exhibit taking snide swipes at plans that went awry or were never implemented, Mackey chose to devote some of the exhibit to “success stories”.   When I met with him over the summer, a worksheet he had created suggested that one could also do an exhibit on Downtown success stories that had NO formal planning behind them. Fourth Avenue, for example, has been conspicuously absent from official government-sponsored plans; despite that, or perhaps BECAUSE of it, Fourth Avenue is the most consistently vibrant part of Downtown.

Mackey’s pursuit of master plan acquisition has taken him to the archives at Pima County’s Planning Department (very fruitful, he says), the City of Tucson’s Department of Urban Planning and Design (not so much), the website of the City’s Transportation Department (very useful), the collections of architects such as Rob Paulus, Poster Frost Associates, and Burns Wald-Hopkins Shambach, and those of historians such as Alex Kimmelman. He’s also consulted some long-time planners and historic preservationists, such as J.T. Fey, Brooks Jeffery, Bob Vint, and Jerry Kyle, and taken some suggestions for where to look and what to look for from this writer.  Mackey’s colleagues from Pop-Up Spaces Design Co-0p helped create the presentation of the artifacts.   A small booklet on the exhibit is available for sale, to help defray expenses from this volunteer effort.

Building owner John Wesley Miller graciously offered the use of the space; Miller has subdivided the old discount store into On a Roll sushi restaurant and bar, a Jimmy John’s sandwich restaurant coming soon, and perhaps another restaurant at the corner.

Plan to check out the exhibit on Saturdays in October.

(The preceding is a revision of an article I wrote that was originally published in the August 2009 edition of Zocalo magazine, www.TheZMag.com. What follows is the Facebook posting for this event.)

Tucson artists Bill Mackey, Julie Ray, Rachelle Díaz and Kimi Eisele, representing several collectives and entities including Worker, Inc., Pop-Up Spaces and Design Co*op, present “±92: Downtown Master Plans, 1932-2009,” a compilation of over 100 Downtown Tucson master plans, comprehensive plans, studies and projects. The exhibition will include realized and unrealized plans authored from the early 20th century to 2009. An interactive timeline will help viewers track world events, economic and social trends, and Tucson’s history in relationship to the plans’ origins, realization, or death. This is a rare opportunity to see ALL of the planning for downtown Tucson in one space at one time.

Also included in the exhibition will be 92 images (by photographers including Josh Schachter) of spaces and places that make our downtown unique—some of these are a direct result of planning, some of which are not.

At the October 3 opening, a crew of official performing “apparatchiks” (i.e. officials in a large organization, usually a political one), will be on site to collect public input for current and future downtown master planning, for which there are no funds, of course.

A small booklet entitled “A Guide to the Master Plans of Downtown Tucson” will be available for purchase.

Refreshments will be provided at the Grand Opening on October 3.

Worker, Inc., Pop-Up Spaces and Design Co*op received pertinent plans, information, space, and materials for this exhibit from Pima County Planning Department Archives, City of Tucson Department of Transportation, Tucson Pima Arts Council, Poster Frost Architects, BWS Architects, Rob Paulus Architects, Wheat Scharf Landscape Architects, PARKWISE, Earl Wettstein, Alex Kimmelman, Donovan Durband, Si Schorr, J.T. Fey, John Wesley Miller Companies, MOCA Tucson, Wilko, and others.

Created in 1995, Worker Inc. is a company that specializes in promoting change in the built environment. In 2007, Worker Inc. saw the need for science based research of the more mundane processes of popular culture and formed the Neighborhood Residents Resources Ethnography Studies Unit.

POP UP SPACES seeks to produce temporary, interactive, site-specific installations in empty spaces in which the visitors are not just expected to be passive viewers, but asked to be active participants. The goal of these art-based experiences is to enhance economic vitality and public engagement in downtown Tucson through promotion of the area’s culture, history, architecture and business community.

Design Co*op is a collective of Tucson-based architects, designers, and artists working across disciplines to raise public awareness of the value of affordable and appropriate urban design.

For more information, visit

^{http://popuspaces.org, or contact Bill Mackey, 520-664-4847, workerarchitect@yahoo.com; Julie Ray, 520-891-8098, juliegraphics@gmail.com; Rachelle Díaz, 520-203-8363, info@popupspaces.org; Kimi Eisele, 520-882-6092, kimi@kimieisele.com.}

Throughout what seems to have become an annual ritual in the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July–wondering if the City can afford to host a fireworks display on “A” Mountain–the Hotel Congress was planning an Independence Day event that would make the trip downtown on this night worth it, with or without the sparkly lights in the sky.

Hotel Congress has teamed up with the Tucson chapter of Local First! Arizona to host “Indie-pendence Day Extravaganza” from 5pm until Midnight tonight.

The pre- and post-fireworks outdoor party features local favorites Al Foul, Tom Walbank, Pork Torta, The Tryst, Right on John, and the “Cool DJ Stylings” of Carl Hanni.

Only $5 gets you in to the party, which features the 6 live acts, BBQ, and raffle prizes from local merchants.

Proceeds go to Local First! Arizona, which is capping off its 7th Annual Independents Week.

For more information on Local First! Arizona, visit their site:
http://localfirstaz.com/index.php

And, for information on the local economic benefits of supporting local businesses, check out this article in the magazine that taught me the use of the semi-colon:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1903632,00.html

Some of the downtown merchants who are active in the Tucson chapter of Local First! Arizona are David Slutes of Hotel Congress, Deanna Chevas of Perri Jewelers (13 N. Stone Ave.), and Chris Early of Chris’ Cafe in La Placita.

And yes, there are fireworks downtown tonight, thanks to local businesses stepping up to fund the display.  But you knew that already.

Happy 4th of July!