Here's just a thought I had yesterday... not development news exactly... but sometimes we Phoenicians have an inferiority complex brought on by years of reading this forum. We want everything to be as dense and lively and urban as LA or NY, which obviously will never happen. However, there are a ton of areas that we can be proud of:
Yesterday I drove home from the DT YMCA, something I've done hundreds of times, but I really stopped and looked at what I was passing. Heading from a busy cool historic multi-story YMCA building I turned onto north Central. I passed the valet at a nice new Westin on the right and came up to the renovated 1920s AE England building and the beautiful new Civic Space Park on my left. It had a grandiose art piece and a bunch of students playing soccer in the grass. Speaking of students, to my right was downtown ASU and the pedestrians and multitude of bikes locked up to the racks, along with the modern Cronkite building with ground floor restaurants/retail that had students out on the patio eating in tables and chairs. Next on my left came a sweet historic post office followed by an amazing historic high-rise, the Westward Ho. I'm thankful for buildings like these. Instantly on my right was the downtown Phoenix market, busy with shoppers, but not only that, a gravy train of cool food trucks were parked in a line serving students, shoppers, couples their dinners. Next came a corridor of street fronting retail buildings for the next couple of blocks. There were more restaurants, offices, and boutique shops housed in renovated buildings, or in buildings just waiting to be restored. Finally I crossed Roosevelt and came upon more offices to my right (a couple in cool modern retrofits of old brick structures), and a soon-to-be modernized mid-rise hotel, and the Irish Cultural Center to my left. I drove up and over the Hance Park bridge... to my left was the old streetcar museum, a couple old historic mansions, one of them serving as a restaurant, and a condo building with ground floor retail/restaurant, and to my right was the beautiful modern Central library. Finally, I forgot to mention, the whole drive had light rail trains passing along side me and I drove by three light rail stations with passengers waiting to ride.
Sometimes we all need to stop and smell the roses.
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