Azndragon837 |
Oct 13, 2008 7:33 AM |
An article on Downtown Tempe from the Arizona Republic and its move to becoming a New Urbanist city.
Link:
Tempe's vibrant residential core may serve as new city model
Quote:
Tempe's vibrant residential core may serve as new city model
by William Hermann - Oct. 13, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
One of the biggest high-rise and condominium building booms in Valley history is transforming Tempe into a retail, residential and entertainment center some are calling a model for "the new American city."
City officials and many developers believe that Tempe will evolve over the next few years into a city with a mixed-use core where residents live, ride to work on bicycles or on public transportation, and walk to restaurants, museums, sporting events and schools.
And, experts say, as Tempe's core becomes more populated, the city will become one of the nation's best examples of "New Urbanism," a planning movement that began in the 1980s in reaction to the post-World War II phenomenon of sprawling American cities.
Sprawl pushed homes into housing developments, jobs into business parks and most shopping and entertainment into malls. Many believe that sprawl, and its connecting freeways, destroyed urban centers from Atlantic City to Los Angeles and crippled America's community life.
"After World War II, there was an abandonment of the city, but now there is a return to the norm and embrace of urbanism," said John Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism. "It's partly because of the rising price of gasoline, but many people no longer want to have to drive everywhere. People want to go to the corner on foot and get a quart of milk. They want to have social life in walking distance of where they live."
Mayor Hugh Hallman said the urban life being created in Tempe appeals to universal needs.
"We want a place to live life and have the things we enjoy close by, and that means being with other people in comfortable environments that are interesting," he said. "You walk out of where you live and pass a bakery and smell the bread, and you pass the Italian restaurant next door, pass a theater. . . . We want a city with all the things nearby that create a rich life."
During the past 30 years, attempts have been made nationwide to create, from the ground up, New Urbanist communities with housing, businesses and entertainment built alongside one another. But most city planners and architects who advocate the movement say it really is about rebuilding existing city centers, such as Tempe's Mill Avenue District, into something like they were 50 years ago.
David Feehan, director of the Washington D.C.-based International Downtown Association, said he believes New Urbanism is a good direction for cities to go.
"Is there New Urbanism in Tempe? Yes . . . at least as much as anywhere in Arizona," he said. "And as places like Tempe pursue these New Urbanist principles, they will flourish and become a more and more desirable place to live."
Feehan said Tempe's transformation puts it alongside such cities as Memphis, St. Louis and Denver, where revitalized downtowns are becoming centers of culture, commerce and desirable living.
"Tempe has done a lot of things right, and that is evidenced by the amount of development going on now," said Feehan, who has visited the city several times.
Close to home
Real-estate agent Sander Streeter, 46, works out of his new condo in the Brownstones, about three blocks west of downtown Tempe.
He and his girlfriend jump onto their bikes or his Vespa to catch a football game at Arizona State University or see a show at the new Tempe Center for the Arts. They walk to the House of Tricks or Caffe Boa to grab a meal.
"Everything is here," said Streeter, who spent part of his life in New York City. "I just won't spend hours driving to work on a freeway - won't do it. We like the feeling in downtown Tempe."
Tempe's version of New Urbanism mixes older neighborhoods surrounding ASU and Mill Avenue with several thousand new condominium units. Within an 8-square-mile area of central Tempe near Town Lake and downtown, and despite increasingly tough economic conditions, more than 35 building projects recently have been completed, are soon to be finished, are breaking ground this year or are likely to break ground by 2010. The projects total more than $4 billion in development.
"Tempe is a relatively bright spot in a down market," said Chris Salomone, the city's development director. "The financial community and the development community are treating Tempe as a different market than the general region. There are some obvious reasons: Tempe's proximity to the airport, the university, the coming of the light rail, the Town Lake, and we are right in the center of the freeway network."
In the face of current economic conditions, sales at some of the new housing developments in central Tempe have been slow.
Developer Patrick Logue, however, is taking the long view. He said that although it may take him a while to sell the luxury condos he has just completed on Farmer Avenue, two blocks west of downtown, he believes the area is ready for such projects.
"I built here for people who don't want to commute an hour and a half," he said.
Efficient transit
Tony Hartshorn and his wife, Vickie Bakker, both researchers at ASU, live near Broadway and Rural roads with their 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. They own cars, but they use their bikes and Tempe's free neighborhood-circulator Orbit buses for most of their of transportation.
"I can ride to ASU in six or seven minutes on my bike, and I have a little trailer on the back for a child," Tony said.
The New Urbanist lifestyle involves walking or riding bikes and public transit to many activities and destinations. For years, Tempe has worked to create a pedestrian-friendly downtown and a robust transit system.
The city's $143 million segment of the light-rail line opens in December. Its bus system will mesh with light rail to create what city transportation manager Carlos de Leon calls "the most accessible public-transportation system in the Valley."
A city transit tax that Tempe voters passed in 1996 generates about $35 million a year and funds three free shuttle routes that serve Mill Avenue and ASU, and 36 neighborhood-circulator Orbit buses. The number of passengers riding buses in Tempe has increased from 1.2 million in 1996 to 8.2 million in 2007.
Tempe also has about 160 miles of bike paths, more per capita than any city in the Valley. According to the last census, about 4 percent of Tempe commuters, excluding students, get to work on a bicycle. The national average is less than 1 percent.
Close to work
For Jen Lohan, 38, one of the great pleasures of her life is living near enough to work so that she almost never has to drive there. Lohan, her husband and their 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter live in west-central Tempe. It takes her about 10 minutes to ride her bike to work at the US Airways building at Priest Drive and Rio Salado Parkway.
"Faster than driving," she said. "I have more time with my family; I'm not sitting on some freeway. I'm saving money."
Because a New Urbanist city offers jobs near housing, Tempe officials are trying to create a city core dense with employment.
Mayor Hallman loves to tell business groups that Tempe is "the best job generator in the Valley."
"Phoenix has a net import of 100,000 jobs a day and Tempe has a net import of 60,000 jobs a day, but we are one-tenth the population of Phoenix," Hallman said. "So when we ask ourselves, 'How do you create something that will sustain this community?' the answer is that you have jobs."
Developer Ken Losch believes that people will flock to his two Centerpoint Condominiums towers, the first of which is expected to open in a few months. A major reason, he said, is that, according to his research, there are 11,000 jobs within a 1-mile radius of Mill Avenue, 20,000 jobs within 2 miles and 60,000 jobs within 3 miles.
"With gasoline up so high, where are people moving?" Losch asked. "Not out in the sticks but downtown."
In addition to jobs drawing new residents to central Tempe, he points to homes priced for most budgets. Starting prices for his condos are approximately $300,000. Other nearby condos also are affordable for middle-income folks.
"We want younger people, people buying their first home, to be part of this," Losch said. "It's important that we don't price most people out of our market."
Peter Wolff is another developer who has decided that Tempe will be a center for work and residential life. He is vice president of Scottsdale-based Wolff Co., which is developing the $2 billion mixed-use South Bank project, under construction on Tempe Town Lake.
"Tempe is particularly well-positioned to take a unique place in the Valley," he said, "especially given the pressure on gas prices and energy costs, and the move toward a more-urban living model - the end of sprawl and a flight back to the cities."
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Tempe is on the right track to truly becoming a dense, urban city. Look at all of the development booming on Mill Avenue, and Apache Boulevard is becoming a transit-oriented street with the addition of new condos, shops, and ASU student housing thanks to light rail. What was once a run-down ghost of US 60 is now becoming a street that will become a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use boulevard.
-Andrew
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