The bad economy will likely save Rio Nuevo from the legislative wolves, said state Sen. Jonathan Paton.

The Tucson Republican’s proposal to add state-appointed board members to the Rio Nuevo board is the only Rio Nuevo proposal being drafted by the Republican majority caucus staff to insert into the state budget, he said Thursday.

“There’s no money in Rio Nuevo right now,” Paton said. “There’s nothing to scrap. I think the (economic crisis) actually helped out.”

Phoenix legislators in the past several months had threatened to withhold Rio Nuevo’s tax increment financing, which is generated from a share of the sales tax in downtown and along the Broadway corridor to Park Place.

The Rio Nuevo board has four members – two appointed by the Tucson City Council and two appointed by the South Tucson City Council. Enabling for Rio Nuevo requires at least two municipalities to form a multipurpose facilities district.

“There are a few wrinkles we need to work out. I think we have a framework we can work out,” Paton said.

One wrinkle is how many board members would be added. Another is whether Tucson and South Tucson would still appoint board members, Paton said.

Tucson city lobbyist Mary Okoye said legislators are looking at expanding the board to nine or 12 members, with one-third appointed by the governor, one third by the state Senate and one third by the House of Representatives.

“I would like to thank the leadership, the governor and the southern Arizona delegation for supporting us to help us keep much needed revenue for investment in our community,” Okoye said.

Paton said the Rio Nuevo board would become like many of the other state-appointed boards and commissions.

Paton’s amendment also would add a searchable database for Rio Nuevo expenditures and a provision for a “real, independent audit.”

“The general consensus is we would prioritize revenue-producing projects,” said Paton, referring to investing in the Tucson Convention Center expansion and hotel rather than the Tucson Origins museum complex.

Okoye said the city applauds Paton’s amendment.

“We welcome the transparency and accountability,” she said. “We welcome more people that can participate to create a world-class downtown.”

Closing a street for construction work can be a crushing financial blow for businesses there.

But the city of Tucson and a contractor working downtown have shown that cooperation pays off.

Scott Avenue south of East Broadway has been closed for several months to narrow the street and widen the sidewalks. Foliage, benches and better lighting were among the pedestrian-friendly amenities added.

Businesses along Scott, including the Arizona Theatre Co. and the Royal Elizabeth Bed & Breakfast Inn, have survived the work with minimal disruption because of a good working relationship with the city and employees from Archer Western Contractors.

That’s encouraging. And it should be a model for future downtown work.

Who’d think chess could attract upward of 300 people to downtown?

Jean Hoffman would think that.

Her first Chess Fest last year at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St., drew 200 to 300 people, and Chess Fest, from noon to 8:30 p.m. Saturday could bring in 300 to 500 people, said Hoffman, co-founder of 9 Queens, a local nonprofit that teaches chess to girls and at-risk youth.

Admission is free.

“Tucson is an emerging chess capital,” Hoffman said.

Catalina Foothills High School won the national high school team chess titles in 2005, 2007 and 2008, and Hoffman estimates 10 to 20 local schools send chess teams to Southern Arizona Chess Association events.

Catalina Foothills chess team members will have workshops for chess players of any level, Hoffman said.

The 2009 Arizona state chess champion, Levon Altounian, will speak at 2 p.m.

Chess Fest will offer speed chess matches, where players have 10 minutes to finish a game, from 1 to 4 p.m. Speed chess last year had 72 players, and Hoffman believes 100 to 150 will play this time. Registration is at noon or by e-mail at chessfest09@gmail.com.

“This is not a serious, intense competitive day,” Hoffman said. “The lessons are meant to be fun. A lot of people have chess phobia. We’re trying to get people over that. It can be a fun game.”

The fun will be evident at 5 p.m. with the Human Chess Match, where children age 5 through middle school age will enact chess figures on a life-size chess board behind Hotel Congress. More fun: City Council members Rodney Glassman and Karin Uhlich will face off across a chess board at 1 p.m.

Chess Fest also will have live music and an art exhibit at Maynard’s Market in the Historic Depot, 400 E. Toole Ave., across from Hotel Congress.

———

Chess world loses former Catalina Foothills High champion

One of Catalina Foothills’ three-time team champions and 2006 national high school champion, Landon Brownell, 19, died April 21 when, while driving, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a tree near Bakersfield, Calif. Mr. Brownell had reached national master level in chess and his death and career were prominently reported by the U.S. Chess Federation.

Hundreds of Harley-Davidson motorcycles will roar through downtown and throughout southern Arizona on Thursday, Friday and Saturday as the 2009 Arizona State H.O.G. Rally makes its third annual visit.

Harleys will congregate inside and outside the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave., and riders will head out of town to explore the region in all directions, rally coordinator Nick Feldaverd said.

Most of the rally events are for H.O.G. members only, but the public is welcome to check out the bike show from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday in the TCC parking lot and check out the vendors at La Placita Village, 110 S. Church Ave.

There will also be a motorcycle parade through downtown at 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

The Harley Owners Group in Arizona used to hold its annual rallies in Williams, but moved the event to Tucson in 2007.

“There are some tremendous riding areas in southern Arizona that many people don’t know about,” Feldaverd said. “One of the biggest things we enjoy is having our bike games inside (at the TCC).”

Feldaverd said 500 riders have pre-registered, but he thinks total participation will fall short of the 1,500-plus that took part the prior two years.

“I would say 1,500 is really high this year because it is really tough for everyone,” Feldaverd said of the economy.

The rally is offering guided and self-guided rides up Mount Lemmon and Kitt Peak, north to Biosphere 2 and south to Sonoita, Tombstone and the Titan Missile Museum and to other locales.

The rides fill Thursday and Friday, and Saturday events move to the TCC for the morning bike show and the afternoon bike games.

Negotiations are nearing conclusion to fold the long-dormant Downtown Development Corp. into the Downtown Tucson Partnership in May.

In November, DDC in shed itself of the Lot 175 parking space across Court Avenue from El Charro Café, and a second nearby parking lot at Council Street and Stone Avenue.

The parking lots have been an enduring controversy since Doug Kennedy took charge of DDC in 1995 and made no effort to develop Lot 175, which many consider downtown’s prime remaining building-free lot.

Kennedy is transitioning out of DDC as its board of directors, with Kennedy as president, negotiate to have the downtown partnership serve as DDC’s executive director and also expand and appoint a new DDC board, DDC and partnership board member Larry Hecker said.

This is the resolution of a six-month transition designed to revive DDC’s development function and settle a 24-year dispute between DDC and Tucson Industrial Development Authority. DDC and IDA jointly bought the two parking lots in 1985, with IDA a 49 percent partner.

IDA ended its relationship with DDC with a Nov. 24 winding-up agreement that transferred full ownership of the parking lots to IDA. The Authority loaned DDC $907,000 in 1985 to partially fund the purchase of the parking lots, but that sum was never repaid, former IDA President Jaime Gutierrez said last year.

The agreement included a $50,000 DDC payment to IDA “to assist the Tucson IDA in carrying out its public purposes.”

Acquiring DDC would give the Downtown Tucson Partnership a separate development arm to go along with its marketing, maintenance and economic development functions, chief executive Glenn Lyons said.

May 6, the partnership board will consider acquiring DDC, and subsequently the DDC board would consider relinquishing its independence, he said.

Lyons said the move would create a strategic alliance with the partnership, DDC and IDA.

Hecker said the time has come to bury ancient animosity.

“Without characterizing past relationships, what we currently have is an opportunity to combine the resources of three organizations to provide real opportunity for downtown revitalization,” Hecker said.

The Downtown Tucson Partnership is a public-private nonprofit to promote, improve and revitalize downtown. The partnership was established in 2007 as a reorganized and expanded outgrowth of the Tucson Downtown Alliance.

The City Council established DDC in 1979 as a private nonprofit with an operating agreement with the city to develop wide swaths of downtown land on both sides of Interstate 10. Most notably, DDC developed the 400-unit La Entrada apartments and townhomes on Granada Avenue; several apartment complexes near St. Mary’s Road and Grande Avenue; and the initial development around Commerce Park Loop, but DDC has built nothing since the early 1990s.

Tucson IDA was established by the City Council, which appoints its board members, unlike DDC, which has had no formal relationship with the city for many years. IDA is a financing entity especially focused on affordable housing and downtown neighborhood and community development.

IDA in recent months has also undergone substantial transformation after having the same board members in place for 10 years. The council recently expanded the board from seven to nine members. Only four of the longtime board members remain, two of whom are likely to leave soon, said Gary Molenda, president of the Business Development Finance Corp., which serves as the administrative adviser to IDA.

The IDA board will have officer elections in June and after that will start considering how to possibly develop the two parking lots.

“The new board will develop a strategy for the properties,” Molenda said. “(Developing the property) was the concept behind the acquisition.”

IDA brought in PuebloParking Systems on April 1 to manage the lots. Pueblo manages two other downtown parking lots and one garage.

Miller turned this Sam Hughes neighborhood dwelling into the only existing masonry home to qualify for Tucson Electric Power's Guarantee Home Program, which offers discounted rates.

Green builder John Wesley Miller wanted to prove a point.

So he plopped down $450,000 for a leaky, inefficient 1962 home in the Sam Hughes neighborhood and started adding things like solar panels, a solar water heater, a super-efficient heat pump and double-pane windows.

When he was finished, Miller had the only existing masonry home to qualify for Tucson Electric Power’s Guarantee Home Program, which offers discounts and heating and cooling price guarantees to energy-efficient houses.

The program is designed for new homes.

“We wanted to show that you could take an old house and turn it into a superefficient home,” Miller said recently during a tour of the 2,000-square-foot ranch home at 3002 E. Hawthorne St.

TEP worked with Miller throughout the renovation, said Dan Hogan, the company’s supervisor of residential new construction programs.

For new construction there are normally three inspections required for a home to qualify – for framing, insulation and airflow – but inspectors visited the Miller house an extra time, Hogan said.

The program gives a roughly 10 percent discount on electric rates for the life of the home and a guarantee from TEP that your heating and cooling costs won’t rise above a certain level for five years. That cost is custom-set for each home, Hogan said.

Miller’s isn’t the first existing home to qualify for the program, but the others required far more extensive upgrades.

“It’s the first one we didn’t strip to the studs,” Hogan said.

Though the lift was lighter than the previous attempts, getting the masonry house up to the TEP standard was not easy.

“Practically everything you see is new,” Miller said.

That includes extra insulation on the outside of the burnt adobe walls, which was then covered with a layer of plaster.

New windows ($6,000), a rooftop solar electric panel and water heater ($15,000-$20,000), insulation and new stucco ($10,000-$15,000) and a new heating and cooling system ($6,000-$8,000) are among the improvements that helped earn the TEP guarantee, Miller said.

The roof was topped with an extra 4 inches of insulation, too.

The changes were not a good investment. Miller put about $300,000 into the house and has it listed for $699,000, he said.

“I won’t even get my money out of it,” he said.

Originally, Miller thought he could make money from the renovation, which includes custom woodwork and solid cherry doors, Corian countertops and all new tile throughout.

But ultimately he simply wanted to encourage recycling on a new level, he said.

“This is the ultimate recycling. You recycle a whole house.”

Renovations that meet the Guarantee Home standards will continue to be rare, Hogan said.

“It’s just too expensive. Until it can be done much cheaper, I don’t think it’s going to be done too frequently,” he said.

“But it’s good to know it can be done, because then you can look for ways to make it economical.”

Green builder John Wesley Miller shows the tankless water heater and the blower for a high-efficiency heat pump at the home. Miller has put about $300,000 into the house.

———

On the Web

TEP Guarantee Home Program: www.tep.com/Green/GuaranteeHome

City Manager Mike Letcher hopes to acquire warehouses like these on the northeast corner of East Toole and North Stone avenues for the Warehouse Arts Management Organization.

New City Manager Mike Letcher was out of the loop with Rio Nuevo during the Mike Hein era, even though Letcher’s office shared a wall with the city manager’s for nearly the full life of Rio Nuevo.

So Letcher did not offer any grand announcement about Rio Nuevo to start his tenure as the city’s top bureaucrat.

Hein had personally taken charge of Rio Nuevo and did not keep his deputy apprised of project details.

“I was not involved in Rio Nuevo,” Letcher said of his eight-year stint as deputy city manager. “I was involved in internal operations management. What I’m doing is making sure I know what’s going on.”

Letcher answered all Rio Nuevo questions with a prepared statement he submitted for a Tucson Citizen interview

“The mayor and council are taking great steps to get Rio Nuevo aligned with expectations of the state legislature,” Letcher wrote. “We are doing all the right things to ensure that Rio Nuevo will continue to improve our downtown.”

When asked specific questions in a brief interview, Letcher responded: “I’ll stand on the previous statement.”

“At this point in time, (Assistant City Manager) Richard Miranda and I are just getting up to speed on all the projects and progress,” he said.

As deputy city manager, Letcher was directly involved in negotiations with the Arizona Department of Transportation to acquire the state-owned warehouses along Toole Avenue. Several are occupied by artists with month-to-month leases, and Letcher’s intention is to acquire them for the Warehouse Arts Management Organization.

During 2008, the city was trying to arrange a land swap by giving the state three city-owned properties in exchange for about two dozen warehouses, but that swap fell through, Letcher said.

“We have another (property) that ADOT wants that’s gaining traction,” Letcher said. “There is a gap between what the value of the warehouses is and the property ADOT wants to secure from us.”

Abode walls going up on city’s re-creation of 18th-century structure

Construction crews continue to build the wall that will someday enclose the Rio Nuevo Mission Gardens Heritage Park at the base of "A" Mountain. The 4-acre garden is to be lined with fruit trees such as pomegranates and grapes.

The adobe walls re-creating the 18th century Mission Gardens should be completed in a couple of weeks, but don’t expect to see anything growing there any time soon.

Former City Manager Mike Hein in February shelved planting the gardens in favor of focusing all Rio Nuevo attention on the Tucson Convention Center area. That hasn’t changed under newly appointed City Manager Mike Letcher.

“I have not received any other direction,” said Fran LaSala, an assistant to Letcher. “As far as I know, we’re going to build the walls and vacate the site until they have funding to complete the gardens and maintain them in an appropriate manner.”

The garden walls cost $900,000 and completing the gardens would cost another $900,000 to $950,000, LaSala said.

The 4-acre site includes a buried pit house. “There is still a lot of archaeology there that we are not disturbing,” said Jeff Dupuis, superintendent with Lloyd Construction, the firm building the walls.

The gardens were supposed to be completed by this winter, but the City Council switched course in February and put the entire Tucson Origins project on hold. That includes the Mission Gardens, the Mission San Agustín, the University of Arizona Science Center/Arizona State Museum, Arizona History Museum and Tucson Children’s Museum.

The wall around the garden will be completed in about two weeks, Dupuis said.

By Teya Vitu, Renee Bracamonte

The first layer of asphalt went down Friday to give the first inkling of what the new Scott Avenue will look like between Broadway and the Temple of Music and Art.

Trees and shrubbery will be planted this week along both sides of the newly laid sidewalks.

The five blocks of Scott south of Broadway should be ready for pedestrians May 4 and “shortly after that” the street should be reopened for vehicle traffic, said Fran LaSala, assistant to the city manager. Drivers will find a drastically narrower street and limited parking.

The $4.8 million streetscape project was funded with Rio Nuevo tax increment financing money and also involved replacing water lines. A grand opening ceremony is set for May 20.

RENEE BRACAMONTE/Tucson Citizen

Michael Luria, co-owner of the recently closed Café Terra Cotta, has been named the new executive director of the Tucson Children’s Museum, 200 S. Sixth Ave.

He had served as interim executive director for the past five months and before then was the president of the museum’s board of directors.

Luria was the face of the museum in the past two years in efforts to get a new Tucson Children’s Museum included in the now-delayed Tucson Origins museum complex west of the Santa Cruz River and south of Congress Street.

“Michael has a contagious enthusiasm and dedication to the museum that we have seen in action throughout the years,” board President Louise Sternberg said.

Business owners on Scott Avenue want Congress Street businesses to know getting your street torn up for several months of infrastructure work may be noisy and dusty but it’s not debilitating.

Scott Avenue south of Broadway is nearing the end of five months’ work that took away all the existing street and sidewalk and rebuilt a narrower street with wider sidewalks and foliage and better street lighting.

Tenants on the street had such close communication with the city and the work crew that they got to know Archer Western Contractors employees by their first names.

“I have (the Archer Western project manager’s) number programmed in and he has mine,” said David Cap, production manager at Arizona Theatre Co., where new street pavement was being poured Wednesday morning.

Cap said attendance at ATC has not diminished during the construction, which took away all the Scott Avenue street parking used by early arriving theater patrons.

“We’ve been very proactive telling patrons what’s happening,” Cap said.

The Royal Elizabeth Bed & Breakfast Inn, 204 S. Scott Ave., attributes any drop in attendance to the economy and none to the construction that tore out the sidewalk and street just beyond the front door.

“To be honest, our guests come from around the world,” co-owner Jeff DiGregorio said. “They say, ‘This is nothing. We have construction where we live, too.’ ”

DiGregorio, Cap, and Tucson Children’s Museum interim executive director Michael Luria lauded the close and constant communication with Fran LaSala, the city’s project manager, and Archer Western.

“They come around and tell you what’s going to happen,” Luria said. “We’ve known all along, in advance, when Scott’s going to be closed.”

Michael Flanagan, manager of Flanagan’s Celtic Corner, 222 E. Congress St., was encouraged by what he heard from his Scott brethren that street construction may not be as bad on his business as it could be.

“The potential sounds like that,” Flanagan said. “It sounds like they found ways to get around issues that will impact traffic flows.”

LaSala and the Downtown Tucson Partnership worked closely with Scott Avenue merchants to design the new Scott Avenue streetscape and carry out the project. Partnership Executive Director Glenn Lyons described Scott as a trial run to get a communication process in place for the Congress Street infrastructure project.

Work on Congress was supposed to start immediately after Scott, and both originally were part of the same construction contract overseen by LaSala, an assistant to the city manager. But management of the Congress project has been assigned to the city Transportation Department and has been delayed indefinitely.

“It is our understanding that with the recent transition in the (city) manager’s office, the project is on hold until reviewed by the new city manager,” Transportation Department spokesman Michael R. Graham said.

The Congress work would upgrade utilities under the street, move them out of the way of the streetcar tracks and install streetcar tracks.

A new online arts directory started Monday at showup.com gives Tucson its first comprehensive Internet listings controlled by the arts community.

For people looking for a show, showup.com lists what’s going on in theaters, music venues, museums and art galleries around town, and people can buy tickets at the site.

One click can take shoppers to a specific organization’s ticket site for regular tickers or to showup.com‘s Ticket Marketplace.

“We make the decision of what tickets go up there (at the marketplace),” said Kevin Moore, managing director at Arizona Theatre Co.

The marketplace mostly carries last-day tickets that were not sold or tickets that were returned. They typically are discounted, said Matt Lehrman, executive director of Alliance for Audience, which started showup.com in Phoenix in 2004 and added a dedicated section for Tucson.

Ticket Marketplace has attracted theater newcomers as well as theater veterans expanding their entertainment options, Lehrman said.

People from dozens of arts organizations showed up for the site launch event at the Tucson Museum of Art, playing right into Lehrman’s selling point that showup.com in Phoenix led to arts organizations getting to know each other and collaborating more to build audiences – the key objective for the arts community, Lehrman said.

Arts and cultural organizations can e-mail listings and promotional art to events@showup.com to have them posted at the site.

The Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau provided $50,000 to begin and operate the Web site for its first year. The bureau collaborated with the Tucson Pima Arts Council, which listed an online directory as the first priority for the Pima Cultural Plan.

Chamber’s president being very proactive

Maricela Solis de Kester runs the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce with passion and purpose. She wants to strengthen Hispanic businesses and bridge the gap between the Hispanic and non-Hispanic business worlds.

As the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, the organization is shifting its reputation from social networking to helping improve Hispanic businesses.

Maricela Solis de Kester, chamber president, said one way is to welcome Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike. The No. 1 question the group gets is “Do you have to be Hispanic to join the chamber?” she said.

The answer is no.

Solis de Kester this month launched workshops for non-Hispanic merchants, “How to Reach the Hispanic Market: Breaking Barriers.” The next ones will be May 14 and June 18.

“Why should your business be Hispanic ready? If your business is not Hispanic ready, you are missing business,” she said. “On the flip side, the Hispanic-owned businesses are also trying to enter the mainstream market, especially those who come from Mexico. We’re trying to bridge those two gaps.”

Bridging the gap is only one set of words on Solis de Kester’s list. One word one will never see is waiting – it’s not in her vocabulary.

Two months ago, she witnessed how business owners were confused when city procurement officials explained how to get contract work.

The following week, Solis de Kester advertised workshops to prepare Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce members to land city contracts, and the next week workshops started.

Now, two months later, 20 merchants finished the first set of five procurement workshops. Seven workshops are left of the second set.

“Patience, I struggle with it,” said Solis de Kester, who has been the chamber’s president since January 2008.

“If we have an identified need in our community, then it becomes like a puzzle for me. I search for the pieces, put them together and move forward.”

Sandra DiCosola saw this first hand as Solis de Kester and the Microbusiness Advancement Center recruited her to teach the procurement workshops.

“What’s impressive to me is they hit the ground running,” said DiCosola, owner of Summit Contract Management. “If they say they are going to do something, they do it. Hold on to your hat when you work with them.”

As Solis de Kester took the job 16 months ago, she quickly realized the deficiencies of the chamber building at 823 E. Speedway Blvd. were a lost cause. By August, the Hispanic Chamber had moved downtown into the Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities offices, 120 N. Stone Ave., with free rent offered by TREO Chief Executive Joe Snell.

“We needed to find somewhere to go,” Solis de Kester said. “Joe said, ‘If you need a space, give me a call.’ Six months later, I was calling.”

Snell wasn’t dropping a line with “if you need a space.” TREO uses at most 9,000 square feet of its allotted 12,000 square feet in the Compass Bank building. TREO staffing has dropped from 26 to 16 in Snell’s 3-1/2-year tenure.

“I never did see when we would be able to fill this much space. We have always been looking,” Snell said. “We don’t charge them.”

More collaborations

The Hispanic chamber collaborated with the Microbusiness Advancement Center and DiCosola to guide 20 Hispanic merchants through the government contract procurement process in a series of five workshops in the past two months.

Merchants got one-on-one guidance on how to register on government Web sites and how to get certified to bid on Tucson and federal contracts.

“Navigating through government bureaucracy is a challenge to all,” DiCosola said. “It’s across the board for small businesses. They’re typically good at their industry. Scientists and engineers are no different to work with than blue collar.”

Margherita Arvanites is president of Desert Glen Commercial Landscape Group, which has active projects at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain in Marana, at the Rio Nuevo Mission Gardens and in Green Valley. Yet she had not figured out the government procurement process until she took three of the five Hispanic chamber workshops and got certified March 18 with the city procurement office.

“It’s worth the hour or hour-and-a-half to go to this class and figure out how to do this,” Arvanites said. “I’m sure we would have struggled and stomped over ourselves otherwise. If we do this right, we hope to pick up $2 million or $3 million in business.”

The Hispanic chamber has led the way in pushing and encouraging the city Procurement Department to implement a February mandate from the City Council to give priority to the Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise program to increase the percentage of contracts awarded to minority-owned business.

“Now we are stepping up our outreach,” said Mark Neihart, the city procurement director. “She definitely contributed to that. I would say the Hispanic chamber has been at the forefront.”

Solis de Kester has firm goals for these workshops.

“What I would like to see in a year from now is at least $5 million in contracts awarded,” she said. “I’m thinking for $5 million, I’d like to have at least 25 of my members get contracts.”

Edmund Marquez Jr., who chairs the Hispanic chamber’s board, has seen a marked change since Solis de Kester came on board.

“She is doing a great job making sure our members are educated to survive in this economy,” Marquez said. “She has gotten us more involved in public policy and what’s going on in local government.”

Solis de Kester, 36, wants to bring a generational shift to community leadership.

“I want Gen Exers to come out and join me to shape the community,” she said. “I’m ready to pick up the torch.”

Part of her push is to embrace downtown, where the chamber has staged three events.

• The March 21 world premiere of the “Beisbol: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” documentary at the Fox Theatre.

• The annual gala at the Leo Rich Theatre.

• Business mixers at Club Congress.

“I love downtown,” Solis de Kester said. “I think downtown is misunderstood.

“The value has been, for one, the City Council is across the street. The other benefit is the business community downtown is close knit.

“Our members are seeing it’s OK to be downtown. You can park. You can walk.”

Gary Cullivan (left) and Jose Macias are laying pavers at a Barrio Viejo project. They work for Desert Glen Commercial Landscape Group, which enrolled in Hispanic Chamber workshops to win more city contracts.

———

Editor’s note

Downtown reporter Teya Vitu will answer your questions from 11 a.m. to noon on Monday. Go to the comment section of this story for the interactive chat.

———

GOALS

Maricela Solis de Kester’s goals for the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce:

• 1. Get people to understand you don’t need to be Hispanic to be a member.

• 2. Get more members through the government contract procurement workshops.

• 3. “I want to be a voice for the the business sector in policy matters. That is a new direction of ’09. Be very present, have a voice, shape and form policy (at City Council and Pima County Board of Supervisors).”

Contract Procurement workshops

• When: Tuesday, Thursday, April 30, May 5, May 7, June 2, June 4 ; most are 3 to 5 p.m.

• Where: most are at Pima Community College Community Campus, 401 N. Bonita Way, Room A130

• Cost: $40 per class

• Contact: Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce at 620-0005.

Reaching the Hispanic Market workshops

• When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 14, June 18

• Where: Arizona Inn, 2200 E. Elm St.

• Cost: $35 for each

• Contact: Ricardo Esquivel at 990-3806.

The Government Cemetery in Tucson, circa 1870

Eight months after archaeological researchers removed the last of more than 1,300 remains from a nearly forgotten 19th-century downtown cemetery, some faces from the past are beginning to emerge.

The Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services believes it has identified at least five sets of soldiers’ remains, some from members of the 2,300-strong California Column dispatched to Tucson in 1862 to drive out Confederate troops that briefly occupied parts of the Southwest during the Civil War.

The remains of 58 U.S. soldiers stationed at the then-Fort Lowell location near the cemetery have been exhumed and will be reburied with full honors at the Southern Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Sierra Vista on May 16.

“Serving in the Western territories was a thankless job back then and I can’t think of a better way to honor these soldiers,” Joey Strickand, director of the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services, said Friday.

There were adjoining civilian and military cemeteries downtown in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Army’s Camp Lowell was then located in what is now the Armory Park area and was later moved east to near what is now the intersection of Glenn Street and Craycroft Road.

By comparing old cemetery maps and Army records, Veterans’ Services officials believe they have given names to at least five soldiers buried downtown.

The soldiers’ remains will be buried in a specially constructed 19th-century-style cemetery near Fort Huachucha, Strickland said.

The downtown site, at Stone and Toole avenues, was excavated to prepare for a new Pima County-Tucson Joint Courts Complex approved in a 2004 Pima County bond package.

State law required the county to hire an archaeological consultant to study the site before beginning construction of the courts complex.

What was found was beyond expectations.

“We have an unparalled view of a period of Tucson history of which we have some documentary information but little in the way of physical,” Roger Anyon, project manager for the Pima County Cultural Resources and Historic Preservation Office, said Friday.

“The cemetery gives us a view of Tucson life then and the people who lived here,” Anyon said.

Few of the more than 1,250 civilian remains exhumed and stored for reburial later this year likely will ever be identified, Anyon said.

Archaeologists studying data from the field are finding some clues about how tough life was back then.

One grave revealed three burials, possibly of a family who died at the same time and were buried together, Marlesa Gray said Friday. Gray is the project manager for Statistical Research, Inc., the archaeological consultant hired by the county.

“There were the remains of a fetus and the mother” who may have died together in childbirth, Gray noted.

Territorial Tucson had several deadly outbreaks of disease at that time, including smallpox in 1870.

“There may be certain sections of the cemetery that can be dated to those epidemic periods,” Gray said.

The epidemics took a heavy toll on the very young and very old, records show.

———

SOLDIERS

Tentatively identified more than 120 years after their burials:

• Sgt. John C. McQuaide: Company B, 2nd California Infantry. Arrived in Tucson in May 1862. Died July 12, 1862, from disease.

• Cpl. Paul Remy of Cologne, Prussia. Company D, 23rd U.S. Infantry: Died in Tucson May 11, 1872, from acute dysentery.

• Farrier John Foley from County Wexford, Ireland, Company D, 1st U.S. Cavalry. Died May 11, 1872, from trauma from a fall from his horse.

• Pvt. Peter Bus of Delfshaven, Holland. Company K, 21st U.S. Infantry. Died Feb. 19, 1872, from accidental gunshot to his right arm.

• Cpl. John English of Ireland. Company A, 32nd U.S. Infantry. Died July 16, 1867, of acute dysentary.

Recent news about downtown Tucson has ranged from uncertain to grim. But there are bright signs, and one of the brightest is Maynards Market.

The market in the Historic Depot, 400 E. Toole Ave., is a project of Hotel Congress owners Shana and Richard Oseran. They also own Maynards Kitchen, a restaurant in the depot.

Maynards Market has been open for only two months but has developed a loyal customer base. Shoppers come for the local products that are carried.

“People are really yearning for something to happen downtown,” Shana Oseran said this week.

Indeed they are. And that gives downtown redevelopment efforts a built-in fan base. Maynards is showing that downtown is happening.