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Posted Nov 6, 2019, 5:50 PM
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How Tempe Town Lake went from dusty riverbed to in-demand waterfront hub
Cool AZ Central article on Tempe Town Lake celebrating its 20th Anniversary.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/loc...ion-spot-celebrates-20-years/4024863002/
Quote:
After 20 years, high costs and even a dam break, Tempe Town Lake has finally found its footing
Water taxis zip visitors to waterfront restaurants and crowds flow from fancy hotels and high-rise condos to specialty shops.
A San Antonio River Walk-style boardwalk is what supporters of Tempe Town Lake dreamed of more than 20 years ago.
Skeptics just saw a dry river. A place where people dumped trash. Some described plans to build the lake as a boondoggle. Environmentalists worried about a man-made lake in the desert.
Amid this backdrop, Tempe mustered the political will, cleared red tape with 22 state and federal agencies and spent millions to open Tempe Town Lake on Nov. 7, 1999.
Twenty years later, the lake hasn’t turned out exactly as planned.
That's not to say the lake hasn't been a success. Water laps at its banks, its shores are lined with new developments, and some 42,000 employees and 30,000 residents work or live within a mile of the water.
But Tempe Town Lake is not exactly the lake, or the story, anyone expected.
Its story is one of long-laid plans defied, upended or suddenly changed. Its biggest buildings and neighbors bear little resemblance to the ones Tempe originally planned. The water activities and even the dam itself are different from the way they were envisioned or built.
Regardless of its past, the lake has a growing future. Cranes dot the landscape, and from anywhere on the waterfront, it's easy to see more growth is on the way. The question now is whether the future will match anybody's expectations.
From original townsite to dumping ground
Water drew people to the Tempe area from the beginning.
The removal of that water created what one environmentalist called a "jagged, ugly, dried out scar cutting across a beautiful valley" and led residents to rally around the idea of a lake.
The Salt River that once flowed freely through Tempe and beyond was diverted in the early 20th century.
Roosevelt Dam opened in 1911 some 70 miles east of Tempe on the upper Salt River, hailed as a way to secure water for the Phoenix area and to control destructive flooding.
The dam initially made the Salt River more of a gathering spot. People swam at the base of State Bridge. Tempe Beach Park opened in 1931. Dwight “Red” Harkins, who would go on to build the movie theater chain, showed summer movies there, projected onto large sheets.
But more dams were built and drained the Salt River.
By the latter half of the 20th century, the dry riverbed — still prone to destructive floods — was a blighted, industrial area dotted with trash dumps.
The condition led people to consider ways to bring the water back. Those plans didn't all pan out, but they would succeed with Tempe Town Lake.
An Arizona State University professor, in 1960, began to consider how to revitalize the Salt River. The ASU College of Architecture class of 1966 created designs to control flooding, restore the environment and lead to more recreation and economic development.
Phoenix-area leaders latched on to the idea called the Rio Salado Project, which is Spanish for Salt River. The proposal would have revitalized 38 miles of the blighted river, but voters across the Valley, in 1987, rejected a tax hike to fuel the ambitious idea.
In Tempe, however, the dry riverbed was the entry point to the city, the first thing many visitors saw.
There, voters overwhelmingly supported the idea and then-Mayor Harry Mitchell ran with it.
"I just promised to build a lake," retired Tempe employee Steven Nielsen remembers Mitchell calling him up to tell him not long after the vote.
And so the effort began. The city purchased land around the river, gained approvals from all levels of government and earmarked city funds for the project.
It would take a full decade for construction to begin.
The cost of waterfront development
Crews broke ground on the two-mile-long man-made lake in August 1997, three years after Mitchell left office.
By the time plans were finalized, the lake was estimated to cost $45 million, and came in on target. The city, which paid most of that cost, expects to pay off the final $12 million of that debt in 2023.
But costs extended beyond the lake such as channelizing the river, purchasing land, building a second Mill Avenue Bridge and moving Rio Salado Parkway further south to give room to develop near the lake. The city estimated the cost to open the lake and improve the area was just more than $150 million, which surprised some at the time.
On Nov. 6, 1999, more than 10,000 people gathered at Town Lake to watch sailboats, to hear choirs sing and to admire the nearly 1 billion gallons of water that transformed the dusty riverbed.
''We've created the Central Park of the Valley,'' Neil Giuliano, who became mayor in 1994 with the promise of building the lake, said during the celebration.
The costs did not stop with the lake's opening. The $72.4 million Tempe Center for the Arts opened in 2007. A nearly $7 million pedestrian bridge was added.
Then there was that night in July 2010 when the dam broke, emptying the lake within hours. The city would find a temporary fix, refill the lake and eventually replace inflatable rubber dams with a hydraulically operated steel gate. The price was $47 million.
In all, from the initial dredging of the river to operating the lake today, the city estimates the lake and the area around it has cost the city and other government agencies $420.4 million. Tempe has shouldered just more than 80% of those costs.
Private development pays a small portion of the operating costs.
Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell — the son of Harry Mitchell — said the benefits have been more than worth the cost.
"We've taken landfill sites and turned them into opportunities for residents, not just in Tempe but the entire region," he said.
The hefty price tag was expected and drew investors, Mitchell said.
Tempe estimates private developers have put more than $1.5 billion into projects around the lake in the past 20 years.
But those developments didn't go exactly as planned.
Unexpected challenges
Chris Anaradian joined the city as lake manager in 2001 and would take developers and investors on boat tours to sell the city's vision.
The body of water had a park system looping around it, but no buildings.
The opening of the lake coincided with the dot-com crash and most of the city's carefully crafted development plans never occurred.
“The crash was probably the first unexpected of many, many unexpected challenges,” Anaradian said.
Giuliano ranks losing the Peabody Hotel as one of his biggest regrets.
The 29-story building, planned east of Rural Road as the state's largest hotel, could never secure funding.
“We wanted the Peabody so bad,” Giuliano said. “I spent a lot of political capital on trying to get the Peabody to happen, but you can’t force development.”
A deal to transform the historic Hayden Flour Mill into condos and a a hotel also vanished.
Giuliano, in 2001, found himself defending the city's investment and the lack of private development to show for it.
"Would I like it to be more? Of course. I want it all, and I want it all done tomorrow. But the world doesn't work that way," he told The Republic at the time.
Beyond the economy, some developers were skeptical about the city’s long-term investment in the lake and wondered whether it would be there 30 years later.
But there were believers.
They included SunCor Development, which was behind the Hayden Ferry Lakeside office, condo and hotel project.
Randy Levin, then SunCor's vice president of urban development, was intrigued at building next to a lake in the desert. He sold others on the risk.
“There was a lot of justification we had to make to the lenders and brokers who weren’t necessarily on board with the idea because it was an unproven market,” he said.
Beyond the lake, SunCor knew the area had the ingredients for success:
- a central metro Phoenix location
- a large, educated population
- access to loops 101 and 202
- nearby Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
And it was near "a real downtown, something that wasn’t fabricated but grew organically over decades," Levin said.
When Hayden Ferry Lakeside's first phase opened in 2002, the office stood as the lake's lone building.
A handful of other developments — the city's arts center and a condo project — opened by 2008. Then another unexpected event happened: the Great Recession.
Tax breaks spur growth
Town Lake came out of the recession quicker than much of metro Phoenix, in part, because so many projects were approved prior to and during the downturn.
City leaders learned the value of offering tax breaks to lure the kind of development they sought.
Anaradian said the deals helped attract developers eyeing cheaper properties in neighboring cities such as Chandler or Phoenix.
A city spokeswoman said the tax breaks help offset the costs to remediate properties that were once used as dumping grounds.
Hayden Ferry Lakeside, the lake's first private development, was the first of many projects to receive tax breaks.
About half of the developments along the lake got property tax breaks from the city or don’t pay property taxes because they’re on tax-exempt university land.
Anaradian said he doesn't think development in the unproven market would've happened without such incentives.
Hugh Hallman, who was mayor from 2004 to 2012, said he believes the lake would have developed, but it would've taken more time.
The lake is a "great amenity for the city" but it came at a cost, he said.
How does reality compare to what was envisioned?
Giuliano acknowledges the 20-year-old lake isn't what was planned.
“Did it happen exactly the way we envisioned it? Of course not. Did it happen exactly on the time frame we would have liked? Of course not. But it has been a success,” he said.
No dinner boat cruises float passengers past Hayden Butte. That Peabody Hotel never came.
Instead, the banks of Town Lake became a jobs hub with glass-sided corporate offices, condos, apartments and some of the hottest commercial real estate in metro Phoenix.
Tempe's stretch of Salt River and the lake has the highest commercial office rental rate in the Valley, according to Colliers International. The only other competitive areas would be near Scottsdale Fashion Square and the Biltmore, according to the commercial real estate firm's latest research report on metro Phoenix office rents.
State Farm's regional headquarters, with approximately 7,000 workers, fully opened in 2017 and is the largest employer on the waterfront. Amazon, Silicon Valley Bank and ZipRecruiter are there, too.
Nielsen, who Mitchell called all those years ago and who became the city's first lake manager, said the scale and density of the buildings along the lake has far exceeded what was planned.
“Did it happen exactly the way we envisioned it? Of course not. Did it happen exactly on the timeframe we would have liked? Of course not. But it has been a success.” Neil Giuliano, Tempe Mayor from 1994 to 2004
“Without a doubt it was worth it,” Nielsen said. “Without water there’d be no development there and it would still be a dump.”
He hopes the private development doesn’t overwhelm the lake's recreational allure and its original vision as a community gathering space.
The future of Town Lake
Tempe leaders are eyeing the future as private development continues around Town Lake.
The city has unveiled a blueprint to guide improvements to the parks around the lake and the broader Rio Salado area in the next 20 to 30 years.
The plan — an homage to the original vision — looks to boost recreational activities, from bird watching to a zip line.
The Rio Salado Foundation has raised half of the $5 million needed to build a boat house and welcome center next to the marina on the lake's north shore. Beyond that, the city has yet to work out funding sources for its plans.
The Rio Salado Foundation is raising money for a proposed boathouse and visitor center on the north shore of Tempe Town Lake.
A city celebration on Nov. 9 will commemorate the lake's 20th anniversary and serve as a preview for what the future might hold.
If the past two decades offer any insights, Town Lake's future is sure to include the unexpected.
And to be a place for big plans. The scarred and empty river once strewn with garbage is today a destination the city estimates attracts some 2.5 million people annually.
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