An aerial view shows the Rio Nuevo site between "A" Mountain on the left and downtown Tucson on the right.

It’s May, and we’ve just broken the 100-degree mark in the Old Pueblo.

Our cement- and asphalt-laden streets and sidewalks won’t cool off for at least four months, and in the presumed absence of our once glorious “monsoon,” the riverbanks of the Rillito and Santa Cruz will remain barren and dry throughout the summer.

Upon returning to Tucson five years ago, I came to realize that our beautiful summer storms, known as “chubascos,” had all but disappeared.

In my absence, the blades of developers constantly eroded the desert as the octopus of Tucson grew in all directions: north, south, east and west.

Very little summer rain fell here for the first two years after I returned. “Where are they?” I asked, and the answer seemed to be that the rains were driven away by cement and asphalt, as had happened in the Gomorrah to our north, Phoenix.

In my previous incarnation in Tucson, I had always lived downtown.

As I returned in the midst of the real estate boom of 2004, I was surprised at the high cost of housing in the urban core.

However, I saw little improvement downtown to justify such exorbitant home prices.

Armory Park and “Barrio Historico” were still without even one grocery store; the streets were devoid of people; and businesses on Congress Street were boarded up.

The hopes for downtown redevelopment were being marketed in the form of a vague concept called “Rio Nuevo,” a euphemism, I imagined, for some kind of rebirth that would transform our downtown.

Alas, five years later I realize Rio Nuevo is thus far a dead-end street on the other side of a nonexistent Rainbow Bridge to Nowhere.

As the Santa Cruz is dried up and full of litter, Rio Nuevo would better be called Rio Seco (Dry River).

If we renamed Rio Nuevo to Rio Seco, we would understand that our desert is precious, and that it – and its people – must be protected.

Now buzzwords and concepts such as “sustainability” and “green jobs” are thrown around like wet dish towels in the kitchen of our collective mind, but what do these terms mean?

Sure rainwater harvesting is a good idea, but where is the rain?

Golf courses, resorts and roads continue to flourish while the water table sinks. Yet we call this “progress.”

We build border fences to keep out persons who are referred to as “illegals,” yet we historically have relied on such people to dig our trenches, mortar our bricks, harvest our crops and clean our toilets.

The border of our collective mind, which separates “illegals” from the rest of us, prevents us from seeing the future that could be.

Rather than accepting the reality of Rio Seco, we continue to wallow in the delusion of Rio Nuevo.

Rather than stopping expansive development in its tracks, we maintain that we can sustain life while perpetually bulldozing the desert.

Meanwhile, as state, county and city dollars shrink, our social safety net is vanishing.

Services for our most vulnerable – children, victims of abuse and domestic violence, the elderly, the mentally ill and the homeless – disappear daily as agency after agency must come to grips with reality and lay off workers.

In our desert, social Darwinism has met John Wayne: It is the “survival of the fittest” at the OK Corral.

Presumed “illegals” are told to “Go back to Mexico,” and the un- and underemployed are supposed to “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

By action or inaction, the mantra of our “leaders” in local and state government is: “Government cannot protect you; protect yourself!”

Yet how can we expect the homeless, persons with serious mental illness, survivors/victims of domestic violence, the elderly, children who live below the poverty line, and single mothers struggling to make ends meet in a depressed economy to “make it” without help?

Seemingly, no public funds are available for social programs, but no one is seriously talking about how much money we waste – on the state, county and city levels, on locking up people for relatively low-level crimes.

In the jails and prisons of our collective mind, no one discusses concepts such as “smart policing” and “community corrections.”

Studies have repeatedly shown that police patrols are ineffective in deterring and preventing crime, yet we continue to throw good money after bad.

We do business the way it’s always been done because that is what we are told to do.

There is no creative thinking in public safety land, where jails, prisons and law enforcement are budgetary “sacred cows.”

In the borders of our collective mind, rather than making better use of jail and prison space, we simply assume more is needed.

It is time to take care of people in our midst, to “just say no” to developers, to eliminate “corporate welfare” and to turn off the spigot of endless public dollars designated for nonessential law enforcement services and the unnecessary incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

It is time to create innovative programs that can save taxpayers’ money and serve the needy.

It is time to cut the fat from bloated bureaucracies while stabilizing the humanitarian core of government.

Embrace the concept of Rio Seco, and cast off the delusion of Rio Nuevo!

Michael C. Elsner, Ph.D., teaches sociology and criminology/criminal justice for Northern Arizona University-Tucson and is a principal research specialist with the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health.

Michael C. Elsner

19th-century Fort Lowell cavalry men to get military honors

The site of the excavation near Stone and Toole

The remains of 61 U.S. Cavalry soldiers and some of their dependents exhumed from the downtown site of the future County-City Joint Courts Complex will begin their final journey Friday morning.

They will be re-interred at the Southern Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Sierra Vista on Saturday.

The remains will be escorted from All Faiths Cemeteries, 2151 S. Avenida Los Reyes, by scores of motorcyclists from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Patriot Riders. They will be reburied with full military honors at the new historical cemetery near Fort Huachuca.

The remains were among more than 1,800 exhumed and stored as part of an archaeological dig at the site of the courts complex, near the southeast corner of Stone and Toole avenues. The site was territorial Tucson’s first cemetery.

The soldiers were stationed at Fort Lowell from the 1860s to 1880s.

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of the Catholic Diocese of Tucson will conduct a brief service at 10 a.m.

Before the caskets are loaded into two five-ton military transport vehicles for the trip to Sierra Vista, they will be covered in American flags of their service period.

“We will drape their caskets with 34-star flags from that time period,” Joe Larson of the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services said Wednesday.

“They will be simultaneously covered (with) the flags” by honor guards from all four major branches of the U.S. military, Larson said.

The soldiers’ remains also will receive an air escort from Tucson to Sierra Vista.

Many soldiers of the period sent to the wars against Indians in the Southwest were immigrants to this country and were compelled to enlist for want of other work.

Diseases such as malaria and dysentery claimed many, unaccustomed as they were to the harsh Sonoran Desert climate, Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services records show.

The great majority of the remains exhumed were of civilians in an adjacent burial area, said Roger Anyon, project manager for the Pima County Cultural Resources and Historical Preservation Office, which supervised the archaeological work at the site.

The remains of the deceased civilians, some of whom have descendants living here, will be reburied in local cemeteries over the next several months, he said.

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More on courthouse, burial

www.geocities.com/savmcf

www.azdvs.gov

www.pima.gov/JointCourts

Credit Erika O’Dowd with inexpensive fun for the family – dogs, too

Cinema La Placita draws veterans and newcomers week after week.

You would think Erika O’Dowd dreams in black and white.

O’Dowd is the driving force behind Cinema La Placita, where black-and-white movies dominate each Thursday evening from early May through October.

Oh, O’Dowd loves movies, had parents who woke her up in the middle of the night because a movie with “the most beautiful woman in the world” (Audrey Hepburn, “Sabrina”) or a Ray Milland murder mystery was on TV.

But, curiously, showing movies is not the primary motivation for her weekly outdoor movie screenings on the plaza at La Placita Village, 110 S. Church Ave. Generally, she doesn’t even see much of the movies because she’s busy doling out popcorn or doing whatever needs to be done.

“My focus is more just finding a reason to get people together,” O’Dowd said. “I enjoy movies but I’m not the most well-versed person. My real interest was to create an event, a reason not to go home after work.”

This month launched the 10th season for O’Dowd’s nostalgic and quirky creation, which has created a firm subculture that averages 200 spectators and has drawn as many as 350, she says.

These Thursday night movies – “Cool Hand Luke” with Paul Newman at 7:30 p.m. May 14 – draw Cinema La Placita veterans and newcomers week after week.

“On any given night, 10 percent of the people are here for the first time,” O’Dowd said. “I can tell because they ask where’s the bathroom and how much is the popcorn. Ten percent say they’ve been coming since the beginning.”

Barbara McCale has been to a few Cinema La Placita screenings the past two seasons and last week brought Bill Palser for his first movie under the stars.

“I think it’s great that you can sit outside,” Palser says. “We went and got something to eat and then she said, ‘Let’s go see a movie.’ ”

Cinema La Placita offers plastic chairs, table seating and the lawn around the gazebo. McCale and Palser chose the chairs, but otherwise she’s been on the lawn.

“When I don’t bring him, I bring my dogs,” McCale says.

Palser delivered newspapers in the 1940s and remembers Speedway Boulevard and Swan Road as dirt roads. Black-and-white movies are fine by him.

“At least there is no computerized crap” Palser says.

Couples that started coming to the movies here as twosomes now bring elementary school children. Singles have met here and married – O’Dowd among them.

O’Dowd met Josh Pope at Cinema La Placita in the second season; they later married. Their daughter, Tulla, who is 2 1/2 years old, has been part of the La Placita scene since the cradle

O’Dowd describes Ken and Christi Friskey as the poster family for Cinema La Placita. They’ve been coming for nine seasons – before kids Dean, 8; Justin, 6; and Sagan, 5, were born.

“Even when we had newborn infants, we’d come with a stroller,” Ken Friskey says. “They’ve been coming here since they were days old.”

Christi Friskey says that sometimes her parents and grandparents join the family at La Placita Village to make a four-generation movie outing.

“Once you have kids, it’s hard to go to movie theaters,” Ken Friskey says. “This is a perfect venue for us.”

O’Dowd reveals the schedule only one month at a time because flexibility is both a necessity and a benefit. She needs to make sure chosen movies, mostly inexpensive rentals (hence the many B&W movies), are available. Rainouts can be rescheduled more easily and the open calendar allows her to schedule movies to coincide with current events.

“I did ‘Manchurian Candidate’ (Sinatra version) the same day Bush addressed the (Republican) convention in 2004,” she says. “We were able to show ’3:10 to Yuma’ (Glenn Ford version) the day before the remake came out.”

For a woman who largely shows black-and-white movies, O’Dowd’s favorites list is slightly more contemporary and mostly color: “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Notorious,” “Manhattan,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance.”

If you see “Rosemary’s Baby” in the lineup, know that you’re getting an O’Dowd personal favorite.

“I have a huge crush on Cary Grant,” she says. “I have a big crush on Audrey Hepburn. I get a lot of input from the audience. If it’s available and not too expensive, I try to fit that in.”

Scheduling only one month ahead also allows people willing to donate $500 to sponsor a movie screening of their choice.

“If somebody calls me and says, ‘Our anniversary is June 28,’ great,” says O’Dowd, adding that for $500 that couple can choose the movie to celebrate with.

O’Dowd tries to fit a theme or two in each year. This season she plans to show a Paul Newman movie each month and perhaps a movie from 1929, 1939, 1949, 1959, 1969, 1979 “but not 1989.” “China Syndrome” and “Kramer vs. Kramer” are the 1979 candidates.

Cinema La Placita started in 2000 while O’Dowd was marketing director at La Placita and her boss, La Placita director Jane McCollum (now the force behind Main Gate Square) told O’Dowd to come up with a weekly event.

The first two seasons were funded with a $24,000 city Downtown Projects grant. Since then, funding has been a challenge, but O’Dowd never gave up: “I guess I’m a little stubborn.”

Admission is free, but the suggested $3 donation to see a movie bridges the gap between the roughly $10,000 this season will cost and the $4,000 in sponsorships from Bourn Partners (owners of La Placita Village), Betts Printing, Twice as Nice and individual movie sponsors.

“I need everybody to give me $3,” she says. “If everybody gave me $3, we’d be set. The event costs about $650 a night.”

The sponsorships in the past were as high as $6,500. O’Dowd reined in the budget from $12,000 and pared down the paid staff to the projectionist. Paid staff in the past set up and put away chairs, but this year O’Dowd is calling on movie attendees to show up early and stick around to help with chairs and cleanup.

Larger donations count as going to a nonprofit because Cinema La Placita is a program of the Cultural Exchange Council.

From 2004 to 2008, the movies were a program of the Loft Cinema.

Seating - and pre-movie picnic space - is available on the lawn.

Barbara McCale usually brings her dogs, but was accompanied by first-timer Bill Palser last week on opening night.

Christi and Ken Friskey have regularly attended screenings for nine seasons, and often make it a family affair, bringing four generations together.

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CINEMA LA PLACITA

La Placita Village, 110 S. Church Ave.

Showtime: 7:30 p.m. every Thursday

May 14: “Cool Hand Luke”with Paul Newman

May 21: “Topper” with Cary Grant

May 28: “We’re No Angels” with Humphrey Bogart

May 30: a special 8 p.m. Saturday screening of “The Wizard of Oz” in conjunction with the Meet Me Downtown run.

Forty-two months is the milestone date for the Plaza Centro project at the east end of downtown, as described in the city development agreement with developer Jim Campbell.

In those 3 1/2 years, the city pledges to design and build a roughly 375-space parking garage, while Campbell gets his 2.47-acre residential-and-commercial project ready to start construction as soon as the garage is finished.

Campbell, president of OasisTucson, a local development company, proposes to build 100 to 150 residential units targeted toward university students and 40,000 square feet of commercial space on two plots of land bisected by Congress Street. One lot is the former Greyhound lot just east of the Rialto Theatre and the other is across Congress just south of the Fourth Avenue underpass.

The City Council scrutinized the project in a Tuesday study session, with formal approval of the development agreement expected May 19.

Either the city or Campbell can terminate the contract if the 42-month tasks are not completed. However, the agreement spells out that Campbell “will not be deemed to be in breach . . . if developer is unable to secure financing . . . on commercially reasonable terms” as long as he resolves financing within two years of the garage’s completion.

Campbell would pay the appraised value for the land, which an appraiser will determine in the next 90 days. There is no preliminary inkling what the land is worth, said Lou Ginsberg, the city’s real estate program director.

The three-level garage would cost an estimated $3.5 million to $5 million and would potentially be funded with a revenue bond, City Attorney Mike Rankin and ParkWise coordinator Chris Leighton said.

Council members Regina Romero and Karin Uhlich were concerned about spending money on a public garage as the city is wrestling with a huge budget deficit.

“I think it’s proper to have a Plan B for that garage,” Romero said.

City Manager Mike Letcher, Leighton and the City Attorney’s Office will meet in the coming week to determine the financial feasibility of the garage.

“If it doesn’t pencil out, we don’t build a garage,” Assistant City Attorney Chris Avery said.

Leighton said in an interview that a 2004 parking study revealed that downtown has a shortage of about 1,000 spaces east of Stone Avenue and north of Broadway.

Campbell expects to invest $25 million to build three four-story housing structures – two on the Greyhound plot and one atop the garage – with a variety of commercial space on street level that could include a gym, retail, services and an Underpass Cafe. There would be walkways along all three sides, Campbell said.

The Plaza Centro project has been in the works for nearly four years, but has been on hold while the neighboring Fourth Avenue underpass was under construction.

In the meantime, Campbell was part of the brief life of the Downtown Tucson Development Co., which brought together financier Scott Stiteler, Williams & Dame Development and Campbell to master plan east downtown development from Sixth Street to Armory Park.

The partnership collapsed within two months earlier this year, Williams & Dame left town, and Stiteler and Campbell are independently negotiating development agreements. Stiteler’s involves Depot Plaza and its One North Fifth Apartments, the Rialto Block and the Ronstadt Transit Center.

“We could not come to terms on how we could work together,” Campbell said.

An artist's rendering of the Sheraton Tucson Convention Center Hotel

The TCC hotel is on.

The City Council, with an “absolutely” from Councilwoman Nina Trasoff and “yeah” from Mayor Bob Walkup unanimously approved a development agreement Tuesday for a 525-room, 25-story Sheraton Tucson Convention Center Hotel.

“We’re coming here to build an astounding hotel edifice,” Trasoff said.

Garfield Traub Development is the hotel developer. Schematic design work will start this month, with construction of a new east-side main entrance for the TCC set to start in September. The hotel will be built where TCC’s grand lobby is now. Construction is to start at the TCC’s west lobby in March 2010.

The $239 million hotel, TCC expansion and parking garage project has become a priority for the city as it tries to save Rio Nuevo from the Legislature’s budget ax.

Focusing on the TCC complex came at the expense of the Tucson Origins museum complex on the West Side.

“I want to make sure we do not forget many of the things voters approved in 1999,” said Councilwoman Regina Romero. “We also have a cultural complex that the people of Tucson voted for.”

Councilwoman Karin Uhlich urged fiscal caution during economic hard times.

The estimated $167 million hotel will be funded with a tax-exempt revenue bond, and certificates of participation will likely pay for the $39 million TCC expansion and $33 million garage, Rio Nuevo director Greg Shelko said.

Luria dreams of having larger downtown setup

Michael Luria, the new executive director of the Tucson Children's Museum, 200 S. Sixth Ave., says, "I keep one eye on the present, to make it more fun. And the other eye on the future: What does the Children's Museum look like in three, four, five years?" He is standing by a model of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the museum.

Home prices are way down, 401(k) tumbles have negated many a near-term retirement and jobs are vaporizing left and right. But people are going to the Tucson Children’s Museum in growing numbers.

That doesn’t surprise Michael Luria, who became the museum’s executive director April 18 after serving six years on its board, the last four as president and president-elect.

During his board tenure, attendance has mushroomed from 59,470 in 2003 to 95,204 in 2008. Attendance this year is up 10.4 percent.

“I keep one eye on the present, to make it more fun,” Luria said. “And the other eye on the future: What does the Children’s Museum look like in three, four, five years?”

In the “present,” a new coat of paint went onto the 1901 facade in recent weeks; the wall blocking the view of the Carnegie Library building that houses the museum came down last year; Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s Toys will become the museum’s gift shop on May 21; summer camp is being revived; Monsoon Mondays will keep the museum open until 8 p.m. on Mondays from Memorial Day to Labor Day after one- and two-month trials the past two summers; and two new exhibits are in the works for fall.

For the future, Luria wants a new museum facility, a quest he’s pursued since 2006, when the Legislature approved extending the Rio Nuevo tax increment financing from 2013 to 2025. Luria was the board member most keen to get a new children’s museum in the lineup for the now-sidelined Rio Nuevo Tucson Origins complex.

He still remains eager to build a new museum twice the size of the present one, which is squeezed into the confines of an early 20th-century library. But he acknowledged that is in a “holding pattern” now because the City Council has put Tucson Origins on the back shelf.

“Having a new facility would create endless opportunity for type, size and variety of exhibits we could have,” he said, especially traveling exhibits that are too large for the museum’s current space.

Luria describes this as a “year of change” for him.

He turns 40 on May 25. He started the year as the face (and owner) of Terra Cotta restaurant and now he’s the full-time face (and executive director) of the Children’s Museum, transitioning from interim executive director, the post he assumed Nov. 17.

The “interim” melted away after he, his father, Don Luria, and stepmother, Donna Nordin, closed Terra Cotta on Jan. 31, giving Michael Luria the clear schedule to devote to the museum requested by board members.

“If you look at the context of where we were seven years ago, we did a pretty good job,” Luria said. “If you look at other children’s museums, it’s not that we aren’t doing a good job but that others are doing a better job.”

Luria attended a Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums meeting in 2006, and from that day on all of his travels involve visits to children’s museums, 18 so far. Other board members also have added children’s museums to their travel itineraries.

He just returned from an Association of Children’s Museums meeting in Philadelphia, where the Please Touch Museum boasts 165,000 square feet in its new home at historic Memorial Hall, which was built in 1876. It moved into the new space in September.

“That’s 10 times our size,” he said. “The thought I hope I helped plant (with board members) is, as good as the museum is, there’s more that we can achieve to have exciting, international facilities that are fun.”

Luria also was impressed by the Children’s Museum of the Desert in Palm Springs, Calif., and the Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga, Tenn. The Palm Springs museum prides itself on being a “magical place . . . in a cheery, bright and inspiring environment,” executive director Lee Anne Vanderbeck said.

Chattanooga offers hands-on exhibits with “a friendly staff that loves to play and have fun,” executive director Henry Schulson said.

Luria and his wife, Maya, have two children, 12-year-old daughter Kelsey and 8-year-old son Max, but his children didn’t draw his attention to the museum. Neighbor Pete Torrez, a real estate investor, was on the museum board and he tapped Luria in 2003 to get involved for two reasons: Luria operated a successful business, Café Terra Cotta, and he had two kids.

Six years later, Torrez credits Luria with helping turn a deficit of $139,000 on $414,000 in revenue in 2001 into $9,353 net income on $719,000 in revenue in 2008.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled that he was chosen,” said Torrez, who served two terms on the museum board earlier this decade. “I think he is the ideal candidate. He is well-connected and he knows how to get things done. He knows how to cultivate relationships.”

Evelyn Carswell-Bing was co-founder of the Children’s Museum in 1986 and chaired its board of directors for the first few years. “He would be my ace student,” said Carswell-Bing, a retired associate professor of early childhood education at the University of Arizona. “I have seen executive directors come and go. The thing I found about Michael immediately is when he made a decision, he always followed through. More important to me, he looked at the museum as a children’s learning center as opposed to another activity.”

Luria spent his entire adult life and late adolescence at Café Terra Cotta, which dropped the “cafe” after a 2004 fire. When it opened in 1986, he was a busboy and then transitioned to the business side and working the room.

By 1992, Luria had become operations manager for the two Terra Cottas – one at St. Philip’s Plaza and the other in Scottsdale. He organized construction of the cafe’s last home on Skyline Road, which opened in 2001, the same year the Scottsdale cafe closed.

Reopening after the 2004 fire led his parents to step back and Michael essentially became the primary owner. Post-fire lunch numbers declined and last year Terra Cotta became dinner-only, just in time for a sliding economy.

“In early January, we as a family, we decided to close,” Luria said. “We had a horrible fall. December was a telling month for us. January was not good, the season isn’t going to be good.”

Terra Cotta closed Jan. 31.

“Meanwhile,” Luria continued, “the (museum) board was making plans for a search. (The executive director) position was posted about 45 days. People understood how committed I was. I had some board members encouraging me to apply. In some ways, it’s a very natural transition because I’ve been so involved with the museum.”

Luria has brought improvements to the museum's home in the 1901 Carnegie Library.

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MICHAEL LURIA’S TOP GOALS FOR CHILDREN’S MUSEUM

1. Enhance educational programming

2. Broaden museum accessibility for those in need throughout our community

3. Install new hands-on exhibits

4. Strengthen collaborative relationships in the community

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IF YOU GO

Tucson Children’s Museum

200 S. Sixth Ave.

• Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday except for Monsoon Mondays, which start May 25 and run through Sept. 7. The museum will be open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. with $1 admission after 5 p.m.

• Regular admission: $5 children and senior citizen, $7 adults

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ATTENDANCE

2003 59,470

2004 60,698

2005 69,836

2006 80,611

2007 88,568

2008 95,204

MOST POPULAR EXHIBITS

For children

1. Mind Your Own Body

2. Build It

2. (tie) Dino World

For parents

1. Build It

2. Mind Your Own Body

3. Dino World/ Fire Engine

Kyle Lehew, an employee of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's Toys, shows kids infant friendly robots. The store will open a location inside the Tucson Children's Museum later this month.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s Toys will open a downtown branch, replacing the gift shop at the Tucson Children’s Museum, 200 S. Sixth Ave.

The 32-year-old local toy merchant at Grant and Swan roads will open at the Children’s Museum on May 21, said Lisette DeMars, a store manager.

Shoppers will not have to pay museum admission to go to the store.

“I’m superexcited about people who work downtown being able to buy Christmas gifts during their lunch hour,” DeMars said.

This collaboration transforms a gift shop into a full-fledged toy store, said Michael Luria, the museum’s executive director.

“That is not our core competency,” Luria said. “Our primary focus is not for the gift shop. (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s) puts us in a superior league” compared with other children’s museum gift shops.

DeMars will stock the downtown store with similar educational, wooden and European toys carried at the 4811 E. Grant Road store.

“We’re having tons of fun planning for all the parties we can throw once we have a permanent space downtown,” DeMars said.

She hopes to have activities on the museum lawn such as bubble blowing and kite flying. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s is an activities-oriented toy shop, she said.

Luria said gift shop discounts to museum members will apply at both Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s shops.

“They have the opportunity to move products back and forth between the shops,” Luria said.

The museum gift shop orders from 25 vendors, while Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s does business with 6,000 vendors. DeMars plans to triple the inventory in the 300-square-foot space.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s has had event collaborations with the Rialto Theatre and the Loft Cinema, and managers DeMars and David Correa were eager to expand to downtown.

“To be really honest, we started a whisper rumor,” DeMars said. “We said, ‘The Children’s Museum, wouldn’t it be cool if we could be there?’

“We secretly visited the gift shop. It’s a good gift shop, but gift shops is not what they do. Within a month, the rumor had made it to Michael (Luria). He said, ‘Can we have lunch?’ ”

The museum gift shop will be closed May 18-20 to allow conversion to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s, which plans to open May 21 before its grand opening event May 25.

Beginning May 25, museum and store hours will be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.

As Rio Nuevo fights to maintain its state funding, it also is waging an internal battle to decide what it wants to be.

When the Rio Nuevo District was approved by voters a decade ago, it promised historic and cultural features on the west side of Interstate 10.

But the museums and re-created historical structures have been placed on hold. Instead, the limited money is being used first to improve the Tucson Convention Center and to build a 25-story convention hotel.

There is a good reason for the change in emphasis. Building the hotel first will increase the revenue base in the Rio Nuevo District.

That means additional money in future years for the cultural and historic features that are essential but won’t bring in as much revenue.

The Legislature has seized on this thinking and proposed that the state mandate that tax-increment financing money be used only for TCC and the hotel.

That is a decision that should be made locally – by members of the Rio Nuevo board. The state shouldn’t be in the business of micromanaging local development moves.

But the group Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace is campaigning to ensure that the cultural and historic features not be delayed indefinitely.

The Rio Nuevo board should publicly commit to building them as soon as fiscally possible.

These are difficult times for Rio Nuevo, with the downtown redevelopment program fighting to prevent a state death sentence as it struggles to define its own mission.

Rio Nuevo and downtown Tucson will survive and will thrive. But the Legislature must let it live long enough to prove that it can be viable when the economy recovers.

With state lawmakers hunting for every available dime, the operations of Rio Nuevo have come under close scrutiny.

The major funding source for the project is tax increment financing, under which a portion of new sales tax revenue generated in a specific area is returned to the city instead of going to the state.

The city of Tucson has made Rio Nuevo an attractive target, with an underwhelming list of projects to show for the millions of dollars that have been spent. So legislators are trying a variety of strangulation tactics to reduce or eliminate the project’s state funding.

And while some reforms are needed, the Legislature must let Rio Nuevo receive its promised funding.

Reducing or eliminating funding would make it impossible for the district to repay bonds that have been sold to renovate the Tucson Convention Center and build a new downtown hotel. A state move to cut off that funding after it has been encumbered likely would be illegal.

But there also is the matter of equity. Maricopa County used a similar funding strategy to build stadiums for professional sports: football in Glendale and baseball in Phoenix. And roads to a Phoenix-area racetrack were improved in the same way.

Tucson won its “right” to TIF money in a deal that also included the Phoenix projects. It would be grossly unfair of the Maricopa County-dominated Legislature to now renege on Pima County projects.

To their substantial credit, Tucson-area legislators of both parties have banded together to save Rio Nuevo funding. They must remain steadfast and not back down as legislative negotiations continue.

Tucson deserves the chance in a recovering economy to show that downtown can be reborn and be a true asset to southern Arizona and to the entire state.

Presentation brings 25-story TCC hotel a step closer

Artist's rendering

A presentation on a proposed 525-room, 25-story Sheraton hotel at the Tucson Convention Center at Tuesday’s City Council study session left members pleased about the estimated $167 million project.

The council is expected to approve a master development agreement May 12 with Garfield Traub Development for an estimated $239 million package that will include the hotel, a TCC expansion and an 1,160-space parking garage.

“The most important thing is making a decision and getting on with stuff,” Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup said.

Construction of a new main TCC entrance on the east side is scheduled to start in September so the hotel can be built where the grand lobby is now. Hotel construction is penciled in for March 2010 with an opening in June 2012, said Steve Moffett, president of Garfield Traub’s Hospitality Division.

Council members’ questions revolved largely around financing and occupancy projected during a severe recession.

“The hotel would have to be significantly underperforming to not cover the bonds,” Moffett said.

Moffett said projected hotel revenue with 72 percent room occupancy would cover bond payments. But Garfield Traub is asking that the sales tax, hotel room tax and a 2 percent Sheraton surcharge stay with the hotel to build a 50 percent revenue cushion above the debt service to satisfy bond investors.

Rio Nuevo downtown redevelopment director Greg Shelko said local hotel occupancy currently is about 69 percent.

Sheraton has 19 convention center hotels in North America, said Hoyt Harper, senior executive vice president of the Sheraton brand for Starwood Hotels and Resorts.

The development agreement states the city can terminate it with 30 days notice if the project is “neither legally or economically feasible.” In that case, the city would pay all of Garfield Traub’s expenses due as of that date as well as the pro-rated share of the development fee as of that date. The projected development fee would be about $8.4 million, based on the prescribed 3.5 percent fee applied to the initial $239 million estimate for the full TCC project.

Rio Nuevo has paid Garfield Traub nothing so far, but will pay the developer $400,000 for the pre-development concept plan, Shelko said.

No mention was made of the uncertainties facing Rio Nuevo in the Legislature or that Shelko’s position will be eliminated June 30. Garfield Traub principal Tony Traub said he isn’t concerned about the Rio Nuevo turbulence.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is going ahead,” Traub said.

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On the Web

Downtown convention hotel proposal: www.ci.tucson.az.us/agdocs/20090505/ssmay5-09-152-2a.pdf

Design concept report: www.ci.tucson.az.us/agdocs/20090505/ssmay5-09-152-2b.pdf

Graphic artists Julie Ray and Rachelle Diaz count 26 vacant buildings in a tight cluster of downtown streets.

They are taking it upon themselves to bring life back to them, first with art exhibits that they hope will inspire businesses to move in.

Ray and Diaz are doing the first such exhibit from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday inside the McLellan Building, 63 E. Congress St. The exhibit will continue through the summer in McLellan’s four exterior window boxes on the Scott Avenue side.

The Downtown Scavenger Hunt Exhibit will showcase photos and thoughts shared by participants in a scavenger hunt March 1. Participants followed clues to find 10 vacant buildings between Broadway and Pennington Street, and Stone and Fifth avenues.

“We are getting them to imagine the possibilities with the buildings downtown,” said Diaz, who has a Tu Scene blog devoted to visual arts events. “What would you do if you could open a restaurant? What would you serve?”

The exhibit will also include historic photos of the McLellan Building. Diaz and Ray will re-enact their Ignite Tucson presentations from last year, five-minute PowerPoint presentations with 20 images shown for 15 seconds each. The duo also want to talk with exhibit visitors about ways to fill the empty buildings.

“Our philosophy is these spaces should be full,” said Ray, who has a Burrito Files blog, where she asks people, if Tucson were a burrito what would be in it. “Let’s continue to make this place more vibrant. Let’s start with these spaces.”

Ray and Diaz are calling their project Pop Up Spaces. They won the support of McLellan Building owner John Wesley Miller, and they want to get exhibits from other artists into other empty buildings.

“We want to connect with more property owners and managers,” Ray said. “We are inviting the public to come downtown and interact with these buildings.”

The live scavenger hunt was March 1, but Ray said people can still go on the hunt by visiting popupspaces.org for clues and submitting comments and photos online.

But state Rep. Antenori says their efforts could ‘kill’ Rio Nuevo

Supporters of the shelved Tucson Origins mission complex pleaded for 45 minutes Monday to the Rio Nuevo board to revive plans to build the Mission San Agustín and Mission Gardens.

At the same meeting, state Rep. Frank Antenori said Rio Nuevo was dead in the Legislature unless the city sticks exclusively with Tucson Convention Center improvements.

Meanwhile, the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District Board put off a decision on a master development agreement to design and build a Tucson Convention Center hotel, and the City Council on Tuesday is expected to delay its decision until May 12 for the same agreement with Garfield Traub Development to build the 525-room, 25-story Sheraton Tucson Convention Center Hotel.

Seven members of Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace reminded the board that Proposition 400, which created Rio Nuevo in 1999, focused predominantly on historic and cultural features on the West Side, not on a convention center hotel, which has come to the forefront in recent months.

“When the Legislature dictated, in their wisdom, that we need a hotel, convention center and arena, I feel betrayed,” said Velia Jimenez Morelos, who has lived near the Origins site for 40 years. “The history and culture component made a big splash in my life (in 2001). About eight years later, I am asking, what happened to all the promises you made to us?”

Gene Einfrank and former Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer in the past year moved into houses in the upscale Mercado District of Menlo Park with the belief that museums and a reconstructed mission would soon be their neighbors. The City Council in February put the entire West Side project on hold to focus on the TCC hotel and expansion.

“For now, we feel a little foolish, like we’ve been taken for a ride, frankly, a little outraged,” Einfrank said.

The Friends presented to the Rio Nuevo board a petition with more than 1,000 signatures asking for the Mission Gardens to be completed and a timetable established to build the mission.

Antenori warned the Friends, as well as the board and City Council, to hold off on any Origins demands while he and Sen. Jonathan Paton work to save Rio Nuevo in the Legislature with a budget amendment that calls for the Legislature to expand and appoint a new Rio Nuevo board and prioritize the TCC projects because they generate money.

“If any of you make an effort to undermine that, the Legislature will surely kill Rio Nuevo,” said Antenori, a Tucson Republican. “The only hope we have left is to sit tight.”

A crane works on the underground Depot Plaza garage downtown.

A parking garage isn’t an icon of culture and beauty, but the structure under way downtown is emblematic of much more.

When the underground Depot Plaza garage is completed behind north of One North Fifth apartments, it will mark the first major accomplishment in the Rio Nuevo downtown rehabilitation program.

Soon, that $13.5 million, 283-space subterranean parking spot is expected to be completed.

Then work can commence on a six-story public housing tower above to provide 68 units for low-income elderly and for disabled residents.

Tucson long has waited for visible signs of progress with Rio Nuevo, and setbacks and inadequate leadership have resulted in repeated delays.

Now concrete evidence of progress is here, giving us something to celebrate – even if it is merely a parking garage.

Nearly all of the rebar-and-concrete rods that will provide the foundation for the 283-space Depot Plaza underground garage and two apartment towers have been drilled.

The big hole behind Hotel Congress is taking shape as the Depot Plaza underground garage, and construction is expected to start by September on a six-story public housing tower atop the garage.

The $13.5 million, 283-space underground garage along Fifth and Toole avenues is the most substantial Rio Nuevo construction project so far, said Fran LaSala, assistant to the city manager.

Crews have drilled nearly all of the 114 caissons – rebar-and-concrete rods – into the ground for the foundation of the garage and two apartment towers. The support structure is up for about one-fourth of the upper parking deck to give the first inkling that the 242-by-246-foot space is not just an empty hole.

“Very soon you will see this rise from a hole to a tower,” LaSala said.

Depot Plaza includes the garage, a new 68-unit, Martin Luther King Jr. public housing tower for the low-income elderly and disabled; a proposed five-story private sector apartment tower, and the completed One North Fifth Apartments, which was renovated from the prior MLK Jr. public housing apartments.

For now, the action is in the 30-foot deep pit just east of the Ronstadt Transit Center.

Lloyd Construction crews have worked on four primary tasks since starting in late June:

• Digging the hole during July and August, where 4,590 truck loads removed 56,625 cubic yards of dirt and deposited it near Interstate 19 and Ajo Way.

• Removing the underground utility lines on that property.

• Shoring the walls.

• Drilling caissons into the ground.

Once the garage hole reached its depth in August, much of the work has entailed drilling 4- and 8-foot diameter holes in the ground every 27 feet to depths ranging from 52 to 69 feet. The first 87 caissons were installed from August to December and the final seven should be done by Thursday, said Doug Williams, Lloyd’s project superintendent.

This involves reinforced bars (rebar) encased in concrete that is poured from a hose suspended by the 180-foot tall crane that has become a downtown landmark since its arrival Dec. 29.

The Lloyd crew typically drills one hole while filling a second hole with concrete. Drilling and concrete pouring each take one day per caisson, Williams said.

As each 5 feet of the pit was dug, Lloyd Construction shored up the walls in the pit. This started with a 3- 1/2-inch layer of shotcrete – concrete that is shot out of a gun; then a layer of waterproofing; then a layer of reinforced steel; and a final 10 inches of shotcrete, said Jason Mejias, Lloyd’s on-site project manager.

Lloyd has about 35 employees on site for the caisson foundation work, but that will increase to 50 to 60 as the garage is built.

The first 70-foot section of upper deck framing was built in the past five weeks. Plywood lies on aluminum I-beams that rest on steel posts, Williams said.

Rebar will be installed on top of the plywood and, starting in June, 12 inches of concrete will get poured on the plywood-and-rebar base to create the vehicle surface.

Williams said the upper deck will be built in four sections.

The concrete ramp is already in place to link the upper and lower parking levels.

The street-level cap for the garage should be in place in September, at which time construction is set to start for the public housing structure at the west end of the garage. Tower construction should take about 12 months with tenants expected to be moved in by the start of 2011, said Ann Vargas, project supervisor in the city Community Services Department.

More than $15 million is in place for the $17 million MLK project, which is funded by a $9.8 million HOPE VI grant from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, federal low-income housing tax credits, $750,000 each from federal and county HOME Investment Partnership funds, $2.2 million in city HOME Investment Partnership funds and $1.27 million in Pima County bonds, Vargas said.

The Downtown Tucson Development Co., headed by Scott Stiteler, intends to build a five-story, 60- to 80-unit private sector apartment tower at the east end of the garage.

Stiteler declined to say when he planned to start construction, but said he would discuss Depot Plaza when his development agreement for several downtown projects goes to the City Council by the end of May.

“That will include all the activities,” Stiteler said, referring to the Rialto Block, street-level businesses for One North Fifth, possible development for the Ronstadt Transit Center and other potential developments stretching from Sixth Street to Armory Park. “I don’t want to single out one (now) instead of the others.”

Construction crews dig holes and pour concrete last month for the Depot Plaza underground garage downtown. The bottom of the garage will be 30 feet underground.

The first cost estimate released Friday for the Sheraton Tucson Convention Center Hotel is $167 million for a 25-story, 525-room building where the TCC grand lobby is now.

The hotel is part of a $239 million Garfield Traub Development project that will also expand the convention center for $39 million and include a 1,160-stall parking garage for $33 million, said Steve Moffett, president of Garfield Traub’s Hospitality Division.

“These are all preliminary numbers, not guaranteed prices,” Moffett said. “I think all three of those numbers are going to come down. We’re budgeting on something that we haven’t even designed yet. We’re very much expecting a guaranteed maximum price will be lower.”

The guaranteed maximum price will be delivered in December after schematic, design and construction documents are drawn, he said.

Moffett will make formal presentations of the hotel, TCC expansion and garage projects at 3 p.m. Monday to the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities Board at the TCC Greenlee Meeting Room, 260 S. Church Ave.; and at 2 p.m. Tuesday to a City Council study session at the Council Chambers, 255 W. Alameda St.

All Rio Nuevo priorities have shifted to these TCC projects. The Tucson Origins museum complex was pushed aside in February by the City Council with a favorable nod from the Legislature. State lawmakers are poised to change the composition of the Rio Nuevo board to have members appointed by the Legislature and governor rather than the city councils of Tucson and South Tucson.

The TCC hotel project has reached the end of its pre-development phase. The Garfield Traub team has come up with a concept design, a preliminary budget, a capital plan and a pro forma income statement.

Construction is expected to start in March 2010, with the hotel opening in June 2012, Moffett said.

The hotel was downscaled from 707 to 525 rooms after Garfield Traub submitted its first proposal in June 2007. Moffett said the smaller hotel resulted from the city cutting back the TCC expansion to just the first phase, adding 33,000 square feet of exhibition space and 30,000 feet of meeting space to the west end of the TCC.

The $167 million hotel price is based on the TCC expansion and the anticipated room rates and occupancy. The average daily room rate is forecast at $138 the first year and $180 the fifth year. Occupancy is projected at 58 percent in the first year and 72 percent in the fifth year, according to Garfield Traub’s predevelopment agreement report.

The city planned to pay for the hotel with a revenue bond separate from Rio Nuevo tax increment financing, but now that TCC projects are the predominant Rio Nuevo work, TIF bonds likely will come into play, said Jaret Barr, assistant to the city manager.

Moffett believes the bond market will improve substantially by the time the city goes bond shopping.

“If we were (ready to build the hotel) today, we might have a problem,” Moffett said. “We’re probably in a perfect place today because we’re not going to the bond market for eight, nine, 10 months.”

Moffett believes the TCC hotel is the key to downtown revitalization.

“I’ve been in the business a long time,” he said. “This kind of development can trigger explosive growth in the construction area. Dynamic growth happens naturally.”

Garfield Traub plans to open an unbranded 303-room hotel in Lubbock, Texas, in June and a 500-room Sheraton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in November. The firm is at a similar design stage as in Tucson for a 600-room Westin in Portland, Ore.