Quote:
Originally Posted by trigirdbers
Can someone tell me why on earth San Tan Village is the middle of Gilbert and not Downtown Phoenix?
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San Tan Village is part of a new generation of "lifestyle centers," replacing the now-obsolete shopping mall. People now want the urban experience, Westcor and their ilk offer the same stores in a super-sanitized fake-urban environment surrounding a fake urban privately-owned "street"--try protesting, busking, or pan handling down there and you'll likely get arrested.
The shopping mall template has changed, but the stores haven't--the stores at San Tan Village tend to only locate in shopping malls instead of downtown environments. So not only that, Downtown Phoenix also suffers the triple whammy of atrocious retail demographics and nowhere near the cachet of neighborhoods like Denver's 16th St Mall or Seattle's 5th Avenue area where at least a couple of those San Tan Village stores are also located.
And then you have the land itself--San Tan Village offers no respect to the surrounding area and could be plopped down on any 160ish-acre greenfield lot, about a third to a fifth the size of all of Downtown Phoenix proper depending on what boundaries you use. It would be impossible to assemble that kind of space downtown and it wouldn't even be the highest and best use of the land.
For Downtown Phoenix to sustain the stores of San Tan Village would take dozens of high-rise condo and apartment towers in the downtown area. The surrounding neighborhoods as far west as 43rd Avenue and as far east as 40th St would have be completely renewed beyond anyone's wildest imagination. A pre-requisite would be good schools on the norm of Chandler's and Gilbert's. Something on this order would attract families of all ages--teenagers shopping at Industrial, Zumiez, and AE and their parents shopping at Macy's, Ann Taylor, and Gymboree.
The existing Latino and immigrant communities of Central Phoenix would be completely marginalized in such a transformation. The whole area, some 50 square miles, would be totally unrecognizable compared to today.
I think something like the above is actually within the realm of possibilities and may in fact be inevitable, it would just take 20 or 30 years.