[combusean]

Why anyone would make a case for saving Town and Country is beyond me. Its interior is a dismal maze of courtyards and deadend pathways into struggling small retailers, while the businesses that are lucky to have street frontage do quite well.

I think the new Camelback East plan will leave significant buffers between Camelback and any allowed development, effectively asphalting a massive parking lot out front. But even still, T&C's future on the chopping block is eagerly anticipated for additional height.

The Arches in Tempe, however, they at least stuck the parking in back and I kind of liked the quaintness of it, but most of that is gone now as well as is Hogi Yogi. Gentle Strength was kinda cool as an old lumber yard in the middle of downtown. Club Rio is more the kid's memories than the architecture fan's, but still. I don't even remember the former president's house on College and Broadmor. And one last pause for the old adobe barrios in the suburbs....High Town is one of the last, southeast of Chandler Boulevard and McClintock. Most of Gilbert's have been entirely leveled for the suburbs. At least we have the treasures in Guadalupe, with, what, 86% of the building stock that needs to be substantially renovated or razed. At least they're not likely to go anywhere for a while.

Apache Blvd doesn't look the same anymore--a massive stretch around McAllister, south of Adelphi Commons, was cleared for that American Campus Communities project under construction now. Maybe all the vacant lots weren't quite as nasty back then but after the hard construction its well due for a makeover.

South Scottsdale is the mecca for midcentury apartment sprawl--block after block of one story ranch style apartments, relatively well kept up but absolutely choking on cars and the local retail fare decidedly budget Mexican. From one of my friends who's an apartment manager in one of these places, they talk about developers buying all of say, Cheery Lynn St west of 68th for a few blocks. Sooner or later this stuff will evaporate but a blanket case for saving all of them is silly. If 50 years is the new threshold for preservation, I almost wonder why demolition permits aren't coming in sooner.

But if they can do this in Scottsdale, what kind of future does Phoenix's warehouse district and Grant Park/south of the tracks area have? A bleak one, no doubt. That's why I'm a bit irked that the MCM preservationist movement is getting the attention it is when a square mile or so of the last stuff we have dating back to World War 1 will probably be gone in 5 - 10 years if downtown pans out to how we all want it.

I like the MCM thing, but only for its own quirkiness and the sad admittance that the wacky 60's resort-era stuff that killed the city is really the one last unique thing we can grasp on to. With these circumstances, maybe you do have to shift the preservation ring back till after WW2, but I don't think most of old Phoenix is safe with the patchwork of owners and regulations we have today. Jackson St, Disneylandish as it might look, is our saving grace. The alternative is too depressing to watch; ironically, an endless supply of last chances to snap that building is hardly rewarding as a photographer here.