Tucson Development Thread

[kaneui]

Thrifty Block is back to Plan A
Developer drops high-rise in favor of original design

By Rob O'Dell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
3.10.2006

Developer Don Bourn unveiled a new proposal for the Downtown Thrifty Block on Thursday. Bourn is dropping the proposal he pitched just two weeks ago for a 13- or 14-story development with 90 to 95 condominium units and two levels of above-ground parking, built over 17,000 square feet of retail space on the Congress Street site. His proposal also called for the demolition of the neighboring Bank One Annex building.

Thursday night he told the City Council's Rio Nuevo subcommittee he wants to go back to the same design he originally promised 18 months ago, when his company was selected to develop the site — minus a city-built parking garage that was to be built on an adjacent lot. "We decided to back to the original design," he said. "There a significant premium on speed and getting this done. … Our thinking is we're going full steam ahead on this."

Bourn, the head of Bourn Partners, said he tried to react to feedback from both the community and the city in going back to the original design, which calls for a five-story structure with roughly 40 condos, one floor of underground parking and more than 10,000 square feet of retail space. It will be designed with a glass and brick or stucco facade, and will also incorporate the Bank Annex into the project instead of demolishing it. The Indian Trading Post building at Scott Avenue and Congress will also be rehabbed as part of the project.

Bourn was originally awarded the right to develop much of the south side of East Congress between Stone and Scott avenues in June 2004, getting the land for $100. Bourn pressed to have existing buildings on the block, including a pre-1900 structure built by pioneer rancher George Pusch, torn down quickly, only to leave the property vacant for 18 months.

In February, he asked for more than $4 million in potential public assistance from the city, but was told two weeks ago that the city would not be offering any major incentives that aren't available to other builders. Bourn said not getting those incentives played a small role in backtracking on the building plans, but he said he was mainly reacting to community and city feedback. "I think you've been responsive," said Councilman Steve Leal.

Councilwoman Nina Trasoff said she was happy to see the project moving forward, but wanted to know about the strict guidelines that Bourn will have on the project. Greg Shelko, Rio Nuevo director, told the committee the city's development agreement with Bourn will have a series of three-month options, and Bourn must meet certain criteria to have the agreement continue. He said a development agreement with Bourn is 98 percent done and would be presented in April. "There's a lot of carrots and sticks in the plan," Trasoff said. Still, she said the "teamwork is there" between the city and Bourn.

[kaneui]

A recent feasibility study says new buildings for the Arizona Historical Society and Arizona State Museum on the west side of Rio Nuevo near I-10 could triple their annual visitor count, with construction costs estimated at over $1OOM for the two structures:


Arizona Historical Society - entrance



current Arizona State Museum




Relocation would aid 2 museums, study says
By Rob O'Dell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
3.15.2006

A study on the economic feasibility of locating two museums on the West Side says they could attract 322,000 visitors a year. That's more than triple what the museums draw at their current locations near the University of Arizona Main Gate.

The feasibility study for the Arizona Historical Society and the Arizona State Museum was required by the city of Tucson for the two facilities to qualify for a planned $16 million subsidy from the Rio Nuevo Downtown redevelopment program. Planners estimate the two new museums could cost a combined $100 million.

The study was conducted by ConsultEcon Inc., a private economic research firm. "They've established their feasibility now," Rio Nuevo Director Greg Shelko said. "We've moved from planning to pre-development." Shelko said the extra 322,000 visitors to the museums would bring that many more residents to the Downtown area to browse, eat and shop. He said the report shows the museums would be a boon to Downtown and the Rio Nuevo project.

The next step is developing architectural plans and figuring costs for the two buildings, which would be built near the reconstructed Convento and chapel of the San Agustín Mission west of Interstate 10 near the Santa Cruz River, Shelko said.

Representatives of the two museums said their existing facilities now attract about 50,000 visitors each. They said the jump in attendance is expected because of the better location, the increased number of exhibits, the facilities' newness and the ability to package the two museums with the adjacent recreation at the Convento and other historical structures.
Other museums Downtown include the Tucson Museum of Art, with 64,000 annual visitors, and the Tucson Children's Museum, with 70,000 visits per year.

Bill Ponder, chief administrative officer for the Arizona Historical Society, said the study validates the society's plan for the new museum. He said current plans call for a new $60 million museum on the West Side. "It shows that given a prominent location, with a project of this magnitude, that it can be a successful project," Ponder said.

Beth Grindell, associate director of the Arizona State Museum, said the two museums would create a cultural and historic district on the West Side near Downtown. The most recent estimate for a new State Museum is $47 million, but that's considered outdated and low, Grindell said. "We're excited that the study was as good as it was," Grindell said. "We're hoping there will be a lot of public support for this." The study is expected to go to the City Council next week.

[kaneui]

The proposed tax increment financing (TIF) extension for Rio Nuevo--as important to Tucson's downtown redevelopment as Phoenix's recent bond election was for its downtown--moved closer to approval in the state legislature. Although it has been amended somewhat, the extension will provide Tucson $1B over 30 years beyond 2013.

Tucson sorely needs the revenue, since the metro area--with a substantial percentage of its nearly one million residents in unincorporated areas--already loses significant amounts of state sales taxes distributed only to incorporated cities.

(NOTE: studies for the housing, retail and office sectors in downtown Phoenix revealed that successful downtown redevelopment efforts in many major cities had TIF support--although new TIF districts are apparently no longer allowed under Arizona law. The reports can be found at http://www.coppersquare.com/business...iness_Summary/ )


Panel's bill a $1B Rio Nuevo boost
Multitude of strings are attached before full Arizona Senate can act

By Rob O'Dell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
03.23.2006

A bid to extend Tucson's Rio Nuevo district cleared a major hurdle Wednesday, with a Senate committee approving a bill that would bring in $1 billion to redevelop Downtown. Moving the bill forward to the entire Senate, however, didn't come without a price. Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley, the Commerce Committee chair, added an amendment to the bill that would shave about $150 million off Rio Nuevo's total haul for the district's 40-year life span. The amendment also would prevent the city from using eminent domain within the district or using it to expand Rio Nuevo boundaries to adjacent properties.

Still, city officials said they got enough of what they wanted to make the amendment worth it. The vote was 5-2 with one committee member not voting. "It's still a great bill and it allows us to do what we want to do," said city lobbyist Mary Okoye.

The bill was basically stripped down to just creating a new 30-year extension of the district after the current 10-year district ends in 2013, City Manager Mike Hein said. The 30-year extension would take growth in state sales taxes over the 2013 levels, instead of the 1999 levels when the district was approved by voters. That difference could cost the city $150 million over the 30 years of the extension, with that money instead going to the state, Scott Douthitt, the city's finance director, estimated.

Hein met with Leff several times — including missing the Tuesday City Council meeting to travel to Phoenix — to hammer out an amendment that was palatable enough to have Leff hear the bill in committee. Hein said the bill wouldn't have advanced without the changes. Leff agreed, and said she wouldn't have voted for it or even heard it in her committee had the city not agreed to her amendment. Hein said the city had considered using a strike-all amendment to an unrelated bill if it couldn't win Leff's approval, but he said it was better to agree to the compromise and have it pass the committee.

The city violated the spirit of the tax increment finance (TIF) law by gerrymandering the district when it drew the boundaries to include El Con and Park Place malls, Leff said. She said taking the growth in state sales taxes from 2013 instead of 1999 will force the city to create more retail development Downtown to generate enough money to fund all the projects it wants to build. "It was a bad, bad bill before the changes were made," Leff said. "I still have reservations."

The way the TIF works is that the growth in state sales taxes is kept in Tucson to help redevelop Downtown, instead of being sent back to the state. The catch is that it must be matched by city money or public projects that the city is involved in.

Leff said she still hasn't decided whether to vote for the bill when it comes to the Senate floor but added that she planned to put a second amendment on the bill when it came to the floor to prevent any Rio Nuevo money from being used for a new City Hall, because she has heard concerns that the money could be used for that purpose. She said the city is aware of that second amendment and doesn't oppose it. Hein said the city would oppose other amendments to the bill but said he didn't think that building a City Hall with Rio Nuevo money was doable politically in Tucson.

The bill, which was originally sponsored by Rep. Steve Huffman, R-Oro Valley, has already passed the state House. If the Senate gives it approval, the bill will go back to Huffman — who told the committee Tuesday he was supportive of the amendment — and then to the full House for a final vote. Hein said the city has a good shot at winning the 16 votes needed for approval in the Senate. Leff was less confident, saying the city had a lot of work to do. She noted concerns of several committee members over Rio Nuevo's lack of progress and the fact that state law no longer allows for TIF districts.

[kaneui]

After receiving public input on his initial plans, controversial architect Rafael Vinoly returns to Tucson on April 27 to present a scaled-down version of his proposed Rainbow Arch for downtown:



initial rendering of Rainbow Arch



Architect seeks arch support in Tucson
By Philip S. Moore
Inside Tucson Business
March 27, 2006

Bringing revised plans for the proposed Rainbow Arch, New York Architect Rafael Viñoly will be coming to Tucson to speak at an April 27 town hall meeting, sponsored by the Flandrau Science Center.

Seeking to overcome criticism, including complaints that the proposed $350 million “iconic” structure as too tall and too expensive, Viñoly will be unveiling a revised version of his arch, incorporating changes to “provide a better sound buffer from the highway and offer more connectivity between the two sides of the project,” said Alexis Faust, executive director of the center, now located on the University of Arizona campus.

“We’ve heard the feedback from the community and have adjusted the design to respond,” she said.

The controversial architect, whose plan for a World Cultural Center, a towering steel mesh cage encasing an office building and suspending an observation deck, was second choice in the competition to replace the World Trade Center, is also trying to win support from the community, which will need to raise more than $250 million in a few months to build the structure.

Faust said the science center, which has permission to issue $58 million in revenue bonds from the Arizona Board of Regents, as well as $20 million in allocated tax increment financing money from the City of Tucson and $4 million from the Federal Highway Administration, is still far short of the funding needed to complete the span and other buildings at the planned project.

Even with the planned $20 million endowment, “We’ll need about $250 million,” she said. While optimistic about the possibility, “since they raised the funding for the Millennium Park in Chicago in two years,” Faust said, “We’ll be working on that.”

Along with the major public events, such as the upcoming town hall meeting, she said the staff has made presentations on the project at several community meetings. She said, “Basically, wherever they’ll let us speak, we’re giving presentations on the economic impact of the project.” Faust said, “We want people to understand how important this and how much of a difference this will make for Tucson.”

Attempting to again highlight that significance, the University of Arizona followed up a City of Tucson announcement on the results of an economic impact report on the proposed new Arizona State Museum and Arizona Historical Society, planned for property adjacent to the Tucson Origins Heritage Park. The university’s report noted that attendance would increase 22 percent, from 332,000 to 406,000 per year, if the museums were clustered with the Rainbow Arch project.

Meanwhile, the greatest impact on tourism spending is still expected from those who never go into either the science center or the museums, according to the report by ConsultEcon, the Cambridge, Mass., the consultant that prepared both the Flandrau and museum impact studies.

Total economic impact of the 599,000 people visiting the science center is estimated at $87.2 million, or approximately $146 per person. The 332,000 people visiting the museums is forecast to be $52 million, or $157 per person. Economic impact from the estimated 422,000 Tucson visitors who simply stop to see the arch but don’t go inside is estimated to be $362 million, equal to $858 per person.

“That’s because most of those who buy a ticket to go inside the museums and science center will be local residents. They don’t have the same impact as visitors, all of them coming from outside the local area,” said Rob Vugteveen, director of marketing and outreach for the Flandrau.

While he admits the impact of an architectural tourist attraction in a city that already attracts three million visitors a year, as opposed to similar projects in cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis or Chattanooga that don’t normally attract many tourists, is difficult to easily enumerate, Vugteveen said they have confidence in ConsultEcon’s calculations.

“If they were just telling us what we want to hear, they wouldn’t have said no to the aquarium,” he said. “If all they did was serve as ‘yes-people,’ they wouldn’t stay in business. Projects they said would be successful have turned out to be successful and those they said wouldn’t succeed, haven’t succeeded.”

While other sources of funding are being considered, central to paying for the proposed Flandrau Rainbow Arch is additional tax increment finance support, and City of Tucson Finance Director Scott Douthitt said that depends on the Arizona Legislature, which is being asked to extend the current 10-year plan to 40 years, which will increase the spending power of the city from $124 to $400 million.

The proposal, HB-2702, has passed the House of Representatives and Senate Commerce Committee. So, it’s likely that the city will receive the 30-year extension. However, under the city’s current two-to-one rule for spending the TIF money, support for the $350 million center would still only increase from $20 to $117 million, narrowing the University of Arizona’s funding gap but still leaving $151 million to be raised. The city could adopt the state’s one-to-one match ratio, “but that’s a mayor and council decision.”

Douthitt said, “We could have more money to spend under the TIF program than we’ve estimated because we projected a 1.5 percent growth rate, which is very conservative. However, when you’re look out more than 30 years from now, it’s hard to have a crystal ball. In this situation, we’d rather be conservative than optimistic.”

[soleri]

The controversial architect, whose plan for a World Cultural Center, a towering steel mesh cage encasing an office building and suspending an observation deck, was second choice in the competition to replace the World Trade Center, is also trying to win support from the community, which will need to raise more than $250 million in a few months to build the structure.

Huh? I don't recall Vinoly being in that hunt.

I like the daring design, but there's something a bit too desperate about this whole approach to downtown revival. The basic elements of a functional core need to be in place first, and Tucson is about to put some very expensive lipstick on a pig. What if Tucson actually took the money and built an adequate light rail system, or created an entertainment district in the existing downtown infrastructure? The latter is really already in place - what it needs is some zoning latitude to permit late-night clubbing and music. Special legislative approval for later closing hours would help. As bad as downtown Tucson is, at least there's something to work with (compare and contrast to the Dead Zone 110 miles north). Tucson's funkiness is a plus here, and I'd rather see the remnants of a once-cool downtown than a gussied-up tourist trap.

[kaneui]

^ I agree that Tucson should focus on the basics of a functional urban core rather than some over-the-top, Disneyland-style attraction to bring people downtown. Personally, I think the arch as currently proposed is out of scale and does not evoke a sense of place for either Tucson nor its Sonoran desert locale. Plus, as cash-strapped as the city is to provide basic necessities, I would bet most Tucsonans are not keen on forking over an additional $200+M to fund this project.

Yes, the UofA can build its science center on both sides of the freeway, but a much simpler and scaled-down, functional, and attractive pedestrian bridge to connect the two will be just fine.

[soleri]

Residential Revolution

Downtown housing proposals are abundant--but are low- and middle-income buyers being excluded?

By DAVE DEVINE
Tucson Weekly

A housing revolution is underway in Tucson's central city. But because of high home prices, will the revolution exclude much of the middle class? And will lower-income families be shoved off to separate housing projects, or will they be allowed to live in the same areas as the upscale crowds apparently getting ready to invade downtown?
"It's scary how good downtown can be," foresees homebuilder Michael Keith. "In a decade, downtown Tucson will be every bit as dynamic as those in Albuquerque, Denver or Santa Barbara. But it needs to be diverse to be dynamic."

Not since the 1960s, when "urban renewal" removed hundreds of homes and swept thousands--mostly poor, Mexican-American people--out of the way to make room for construction of the Tucson Convention Center and other government buildings, has the residential face of downtown been poised for such a change. Now an area populated by 20,000 mostly daytime government workers, downtown is on the brink of a real renaissance, supporters insist.

Of course, similar predictions have been proudly proclaimed numerous times over the past several decades. From the glowing prophecies made about the impacts La Placita Village would have when it opened in 1973, to the recent, unrealized dream of building a high-rise condominium project next to the Joel. D. Valdez Main Library on Stone Avenue, downtown's rebirth has had a very long and difficult labor.

Not to be forgotten are thousands of people already living within a short distance of the core of downtown, who shop in the few retail establishments available in the area. In general, many of these people are not financially well-off, with statistics from six years ago showing 55 percent of them earning less than $20,000 annually.

But with hundreds of condominiums and single-family homes either legitimately planned or being built within a few blocks of downtown's center, that situation might be about to change--dramatically.

John Wesley Miller is a 72-year-old Tucson native, and he's been anticipating this revolution.

"The future downtown is not going to be the same as when I grew up here, but it will have a lot of the character of old-time Tucson," he says. "There'll be friendliness and cultural activities with a residential climate, which will result in the demand for services and shopping increasing."

Several years ago, Miller purchased vacant property along Third Avenue in the Armory Park neighborhood. Since then, he has been constructing energy-efficient homes in the Armory Park del Sol subdivision, and expects to shortly complete the last of the almost 100 units.

Miller admits initial interest in the project was slowed considerably by Sept. 11 and its economic aftermath, but he indicates things have recently turned around in a big way. "We sold 31 homes in 2005," he says, "and 20 more are under construction now. If I had 99 more lots to build on, they'd sell out in a couple of years."

Miller's project points out the reality of buying a new home downtown: The average price in the subdivision last year was $450,000, and is rising 1 percent per month. Plus, Miller adds, he has a contract to build a $1 million home in the development.

However, some lower-cost new homes are still available downtown (along with some reasonably priced rental units). Local builder Tom Doucette is putting the final touches on 41 Oaxacan-hued single-family homes in his portion of the Paseo Estrella development, along 22nd Street just west of Interstate 10. With an average 1,600-square-foot house selling for $210,000, all the homes were snatched up long before the project was even completed.

The Martin Luther King Apartments, at Congress Street and Fifth Avenue, are slated for demolition later this year to make room for Tom Warne's residential and commercial project, Depot Plaza. Warne hopes it is completed by early 2008, and says it will have 790- to 1,400-square-foot condominiums ranging in price from $190,000 to $225,000.

Warne is convinced the development can be built and sold for about $240 per square foot. Most other proposed downtown condominium projects, however, won't be that inexpensive. With construction costs exploding and land prices rising rapidly, many developers expect to charge at least $300 per square foot for a new unit in the area.

Chris Walker, a developer of the Lofts at Fifth Avenue, echoes the opinions of several other condominium builders when he estimates his typical unit will sell for between $300,000 and $350,000. In downtown's defense, Walker emphasizes the cost must be compared to the average sales price for a new single family home in Tucson, which in January was more than $296,000.

Ken Scoville, a historian and retired school teacher, notes that it's almost impossible for a one-income household to purchase a home in Tucson today. "A single teacher with a Ph.D. and 30 years of experience couldn't buy a home. It almost requires two incomes to purchase."

A few years ago, foothills resident Scoville was interested in buying a Keith-built home in the proposed Mercado District of Menlo Park, located on Congress Street west of Interstate 10. But eventually, both he and the builder found it impossible to follow through.

"I couldn't build $170,000 houses for lots of little reasons," explains Keith. As far as he knows, no one else involved with the plan has picked up on the idea.

Looking at the future prospects for downtown, Scoville concludes: "We've got to come up with different levels of housing costs downtown, starting in the $150,000 range. If we don't, at first glance, it seems like we'll only have high- and low-income people living there."

Keith agrees about the importance of economic diversity, pointing to the Santa Rosa neighborhood south of downtown as the blueprint of what the entire area should become. "You can't tell income, ethnicity, gender or martial status from the outside of a home," he says of Santa Rosa. "It has truly become a melting pot."

To help accomplish that goal for all of downtown, Keith believes the city of Tucson must be much more aggressive in raising funds to promote moderately priced housing in the area. "With the land the city government owns, they could become more of a market driver of development. They could sell that land at market rates to raise funds to subsidize affordable housing. They can do this."

With "affordable" often employed as a buzz word for government-subsidized housing inhabited mostly by low-income households, "moderately priced" is the term frequently used to describe homes which can be afforded by middle-class families. And it is this category of home which might be in very short supply.

Downtown developer Randi Dorman is highly critical of the way City Hall has approached the central-city housing issue.

She was part of a team that converted the former Arizona Ice and Cold Storage facility into the Ice House Lofts, a 51-unit condominium complex east of downtown. Pointing out no new condominiums have even broken ground since the Ice House opened some time ago, Dorman believes the city must do several things if it wants to see moderately priced housing in the area.

"They need to step up to the plate through either incentives or subsidies," she insists. "Right now, (that's limited) to a $10,000 fee waiver. That's nice, but it's not really much help. Instead, it's kind of a token."

Suggesting additional financial incentives would promote more moderate housing prices, Dorman has a series of ideas. These include additional fee waivers, along with reduction or elimination of impact fees and abatement of property taxes while a project is in the process of development.

"The city has to decide where to promote housing, and I believe it should focus on downtown. These incentives would help to mitigate the (financial) risks, and those risks are great."

Believing most local politicians don't appreciate these risks nor realize how difficult it is to make a residential project profitable, Dorman adds: "I don't know if people know the economics of developing downtown."

Keith agrees there are challenges for developers interested in downtown. "There are underlying problems with the price of land, and hidden costs in doing business downtown."

For proposed condominium towers tucked on small sites, the cost of providing parking can also be an enormous expense. Forced to install parking either underground or as part of a massive, multi-story structure instead of being able to pave acres of vacant flat land, developers have to recoup the extra parking costs through their sales price.

Dorman additionally thinks City Hall should consider making direct, low-interest loans to downtown developers to promote more moderate housing prices. Revising the city's process for selling its downtown land is another item high on her list of proposed changes.

"The Request for Proposal process is tragic," she says. She speaks from experience; her company was not chosen two years ago to develop a prime piece of downtown real estate. Calling the selection committee in that case "incompetent," Dorman states: "It's such a terrible process that we will never propose another project (for city-owned land) unless the process is changed."

One firm which successfully completed the city's RFP procedures is Rio Development Company, acquiring property for 250 homes in the Menlo Park neighborhood. Site preparation for the project is now underway, but it reportedly will only have four affordable units--not the 24 originally anticipated.

Company spokesperson Susan Assadi becomes defensive while discussing the subject. Assadi indicates the firm is familiar with the city's community-wide target of 10 percent affordable housing. Trying to change the subject, she encourages only positive comments concerning her client's development.

In contrast, Menlo Park resident Lillian Lopez-Grant isn't bashful about sharing her opinions about the new westside Mercado project.

"We didn't want low-income housing in the development," she declares. "Folks here wanted to see a little bit better population coming in. We don't want to be ghettoized."

Reflecting on the rapidly rising housing prices in Tucson, Lopez-Grant continues: "All five of my kids moved away from Menlo Park, and it would have been nice to have them nearby. But there's no place in town where people of moderate or middle income, such as teachers, nurses or police officers, can afford to buy new houses."

From her perspective, Lopez-Grant is happy the city wasn't more aggressive in pushing affordably priced housing in the new subdivision. "The city shouldn't be in the development business," she states. "They can't find their way out of a paper bag."

James Brooks, chair of the city's Metropolitan Housing Commission, appears ambivalent about the need to focus on affordable housing downtown. "We'd like to see as much as possible," he says, "but recognize it's not always possible. Forcing (developers) to provide it can be a negative."

On the other hand, Ward 6 Councilwoman Nina Trasoff thinks City Hall needs to push much harder in promoting affordable housing downtown, an area which she represents. Trasoff also believes the city should almost always ask for some affordably priced units to be included within projects built on city-owned land. "Instead of segregating these units, we need to look at ways to build them into projects. I don't think that's impossible."

But that hasn't been done in some of the half-dozen cases of downtown housing proposed for city-owned land. According to a few builders who are attempting to purchase the property to construct condominiums, they have not been requested to set aside any affordable units during negotiations with city staff members. However, others have been: One is David Ollanik, a partner in the proposal to build One West at the corner of Speedway Boulevard and Stone Avenue.

"It came up in the discussions," Ollanik recalls of incorporating affordable units in the project. "Because of the steel construction (which we'll use) combined with the huge price increases seen over the last two years, it is very tough to do." As an alternative to including these affordable units on what he describes as a "top corner," Ollanik has instead suggested other sites for affordable housing in the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood, where his project is located.

That idea, though, has been rejected by city staff members. Emily Nottingham, head of the Community Services Department, says she would like to see an onsite "affordability component" be part of the One West project. She also thinks it should be required at The Post, the controversial and long-delayed condominium proposal near Stone Avenue and Congress Street, even though it wasn't part of the original negotiations for that land.

How many affordable homes would be included in these two projects remains under discussion, but Nottingham points out there are several ways of accomplishing the objective. "They could be smaller units," she says, "or not have as many amenities." Plus, she adds, the city could bring cash to the table to reduce the mortgage payments.

Explaining why some downtown projects to be built on land acquired from the city won't include affordable units, Nottingham says: "It's all about timing. Earlier, the market was unsure, but as we move forward with more (residential) projects, it becomes a more feasible component."

From his vantage point, Ollanik offers a different explanation about why he, but not some other downtown developers, is being asked by city officials to include affordable units: "They've got to pick on somebody."

Nottingham emphasizes the city is directly responsible for implementing many other lower-priced units in the area. Paging through a copy of the 2004 document "Affordable Housing in Downtown Tucson," Nottingham checks off the progress made in meeting the report's goals. These steps include building 51 new, single-family homes in the area, along with 11 rental units in the proposed renovation of the Rialto apartments on Congress Street.

"We're continuing to pay a lot of attention to this," Nottingham says of the affordability issue. "It's an interesting challenge, since the more successful we are (in revitalizing downtown) means an increasing challenge of keeping housing affordable."

Affordable housing is not the only concern regarding proposed new developments.

Chris Gans, who owns property near Walker's proposed condominium development, has concerns about the traffic problems the project will create. Gans also expresses regret that the development team didn't stay in closer contact with people in the neighborhood. In the end, though, he supports the project.

"I like the idea of infill," Gans says, "if done with sensitivity for the neighborhood. This project is a lot of density in a small place, but I'd rather see that than (developers) tearing up more desert."

Walker agrees, and states: "If it just continues to sprawl, Tucson won't retain the brightest minds of the UA. Now, the community lacks vibrant culture, but it can build that (downtown) so these people will stay here."

For her part, Ice House developer Dorman stresses that great urban architectural designs can result from building downtown. In comparison, she says: "Too many residential projects are putting up crap in the middle of the desert."

Characterizing those who live in the Ice House as smart, sophisticated, interesting and creative, Dorman indicates most range in age from their 30s to the 50s. "In Tucson," she observes, "there aren't jobs that pay enough for those in their 20s to afford condominiums."

Keith is a big fan of the Ice House.

"I think you can define Tucson history as before the Ice House and after it," he says. "At no other period of time would it have been possible. It showed Tucson as a whole is changing in more dramatic ways than realized. The Ice House illustrated there are a number of micro-markets for housing downtown, which developers and City Hall need to be cognizant of. It's a very unique situation."

According to Walker, the Lofts on Fifth Avenue is trying to tap into one of these markets--people who are interested in living in an existing urban environment. Anticipating that the demolition of the former YMCA building which now sits on the site should be completed by the end of April, Walker says of the future inhabitants: "They'll have the ability to walk to the Fourth Avenue shopping district. That's not a pipe dream, and we're not relying on the Rio Nuevo (downtown revitalization effort) to make the project a success."

Like everyone else building housing downtown, Steve Fenton, the developer of Academy Lofts, located in an existing historic structure on Sixth Avenue, sees his potential buyers and renters as a diverse group. "They'll be downtown workers and UA-related people, along with an older clientele and empty-nesters."

Hoping to open his project shortly, Fenton states renters will pay between $750 and $1,750 a month for the various-sized units. "We're getting a great group of tenants," he says. "I'm excited."

A recently released report on the future of downtown housing shows proponents of the area may have much more to be excited about in the future. Prepared for the city of Tucson by Economics Research Associates, the study concludes that over the next 15 years, between 4,600 and 6,900 new housing units could be built in the greater downtown area, which means thousands of more people living, shopping and possibly working there.

Warne sees a very bright future ahead for downtown. "In 10 years," he predicts, "we'll see more private-sector employment, several thousand more housing units and a retail-service sector oriented to those who live and work in the area. There'll be a collage of entertainment to draw people from across Pima County, and because of the ease of transportation, the area will be extremely interactive with Fourth Avenue as well as the UA."

Dorman is more cautiously optimistic about downtown's prospects. "The city really needs to get its act together," she says. "If it does, (the success of downtown) is a sure thing. If it doesn't, it may happen anyway."

[kaneui]

^Agreed, Tucson needs to get its act together; but then again, so does Phoenix. With rapidly escalating land and materials costs, low- and middle-income housing becomes less and less feasible for developers unless municipalities adopt workable mechanisms to make it viable (i.e., profitable).

As noted in studies done for Phoenix, the majority of demand for downtown housing is on the middle to low end. So why are there not more proposals to meet that demand? Developers, generally, prefer to gravitate toward the narrow segment of high-end product with its higher profit margins. Without a vision and plan that include the necessary financial incentives to make it attractive, "affordable" housing in these downtowns will continue to be little more than a pipe dream.

[soleri]

This belongs in City Discussions, where I'll post it too. But the Tucson award really stands out.


Chicago – April 4, 2005 – After reviewing more than 160 submission for how well they embody and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, a jury of accomplished urbanists has selected 17 projects for New Urbanism’s highest honor, recognition as Charter Award winners.

The 17 projects are diverse both in location and type –- hailing from three continents and taking forms such as affordable housing, transit-oriented development, high-density infill plans, wilderness preservation, freeway-taming strategies, and new town development. In architectural expression, they range from Carolina low-country vernacular to contextual modernism. Yet despite these differences, the projects share a common commitment to first-rate placemaking and the community-strengthening principles of the Charter.

In a year when new urbanist charrettes and follow-up efforts are bringing hope for renewal to Gulf Coast areas destroyed by hurricanes, this year’s Charter Awards honorees use design excellence and the principles of the Charter to improve other challenging contexts, including:

• The threatened farmland outside Paris, where an elegantly designed, compact new town on the TGV line is helping the French government implement a managed growth strategy (Cooper Robertson and Partners).
• An economically declining small town on Virginia’s Eastern Shore where new low-cost homes on an extension of the town fabric shelter 52 households and a community farm creates new economic opportunities (Cox, RBGC Architecture, Research and Urbanism).
• The sprawling 8000+ acres of the US Army's Fort Belvoir, where twelve walkable urban villages are reinventing military housing at the base and creating a new spirit of community for military families (Torti Gallas and Partners).
• Vancouver’s high-intensity downtown, where towers have proliferated as street life has grown more lively and humane under the guidance of a central area plan featuring a “Living First” strategy (City of Vancouver).
• The outskirts of Cabinda, Angola where a town plan replaces haphazard growth with a livable town while preserving coveted forests (Gary White and Associates).
• Formerly abandoned, graffiti-strewn space in downtown Columbus, OH, now reconnected to the city by a modern-day Ponte Vecchio, a retail bridge crossing I-670 (Meleca Architecture).
• Fourteen acres near the heart of Tucson where culturally and environmentally sensitive infill development is knitting the downtown together again after ill-fated urban renewal efforts swept away previous generations of urban fabric (Moule Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists).
• The automobile-oriented core of the model suburban community of Columbia, MD, which will finally become the vibrant town center town founders had hoped for thanks to a master plan calling for higher densities, small urban blocks, and public spaces (Design Collective).
• The downtown and jewelry district of Providence, RI, now severed by an interstate freeway, but soon to be joined under a plan that re-routes the freeway, reconnects urban fabric, and promotes infill development that strengthens the city’s relationship to its waterfront (Sasaki Associates).

Other honored projects include Boston’s Newest Smart Growth Corridor (Goody, Clancy and Associates), Crewkerne-Easthams Architectural and Design Code (Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment), Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza Revitalization (Torti Gallas and Partners), Historic Front Street (Cook + Fox Architects), the Village at Palmetto Bluff (Historical Concepts),Mission Meridian (Moule Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists), and Arnhem City Center (Robert A.M. Stern Architects). An award in the student/faculty category went to the University of Maryland for Hatchett Point in Old Lyme, Conn. and an honorable mention went to the University of Miami for its hurricane-relief housing submission, Mississippi Mobile Homes. Learn more about this year’s winners.

On behalf of CNU and its board of directors, CNU President John Norquist congratulated all 2006 honorees for their impressive achievements. “Many, many project teams set out to create projects that live up to the principles of the Charter, but very few actually achieve that standard,” said Norquist. “The Charter stands as both a tough challenge and a potentially valuable promise. For those who commit to excellence and achieve it, the benefits are enduring places and stronger communities.”

The winners are awarded in three categories reflecting the three scales of the Charter of the New Urbanism. They will receive their awards at a lunchtime ceremony in Providence, RI on Friday, June 2 during Fourteenth Congress for the New Urbanism, which runs from June 1-4.

[kaneui]

^The article didn't specifically name the project, but I suspected it was the Mercado District in Rio Nuevo, which was confirmed after checking the website of the well-known Southern California architectural firm. (http://www.mparchitects.com/index2.html)


(architect's description of the Mercado District)
This area once contained the historic Convento and Presidio de San Augustin, dating from the 1700's, which were bulldozed in the 1950's to make room for a landfill. In 1999, the City of Tucson decided to remedy the significant ills caused by Urban Renewal, adopting a strategy to reclaim its proud heritage and repair this area of the City. The Mercado District Master Plan is one of the first steps toward Tucson's embracing its rich past and future. This is an 8 block, 7 plaza plan that will provide 300 dwellings and 100,000 square feet of commercial space. The plan is based on the local urban patterns of Tucson's barrio, using a public realm of narrow streets, plazas, jardines and paseos, with buildings close to the street providing much needed shade for pedestrians and personal, internal space within the blocks. A new 3-4 story, arcaded 'main street' terminates at the historic site of Tucson's beginnings, providing additional access to the Menlo Park neighborhood and to visitors of 3 major civic institutions: The University of Arizona Science Center, The Mercado, and the Tucson Origins Center. The residential buildings will primarily be rammed earth and adobe structures with commercial and residential buildings based on local, historic precedents.


Site plan




barrio-style residences





Additional renderings and information can be found at http://www.mercadodistrict.com/.

[kaneui]

Athough not growing as fast as Phoenix, Tucson's growth rate is speeding up, with the sprawl now spreading into Cochise and southern Pinal counties as the metro population nears one million:


The boom in Metro Tucson
Leapfrog projects, higher-end homes fuel growth; desert preservation a priority

Jonathan J. Higuera
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 10, 2006 12:00 AM

It's not uncommon for first-time visitors to Tucson to fall in love with the lush Sonoran Desert landscape and decide to make it their new home.

Accommodating demand for housing and maintaining the desert environment have created a challenge that has sparked many a contentious debate within the community.

Since 2000, new-home permits have jumped nearly 65 percent, although they are dwarfed by the 63,570 new-home permits in metro Phoenix in 2005.

Last year, 11,762 new housing permits were issued, a record for the area, up from 7,172 in 2000. Most of those homes were in Pima County, which has about 950,000 residents and is expected to grow to more than 1 million in a year or two.

The growth is reflected in the number of builders of new homes who have flocked to the area. Toll Brothers, Beazer Homes and K. Hovnanian, to name a few, have established Tucson operations in the past year.

Newcomers to the area and trade-up buyers continue to drive demand for new homes, particularly higher-priced houses.

"From our surveys, it is evident there is more demand in higher-price points," said John Bremond, president of KB Home's Tucson division.

KB has provided a spectrum of housing options, from entry-level, to midrange to upper end. Because the Tucson economy offers lower median wages than the national median, much of the demand for upper-end homes is coming from outside the area.

"People are coming from places where they have established a sizable equity in their homes," Bremond said.

The town of Marana, which sits northwest of Tucson and is accessible from Interstate 10 is one hot spot. The Town Council shrewdly had annexed land during the past few decades and began planning for growth.

2 spots in Marana
Now, more than 14,000 residential lots are being reviewed by the town's planners. At present, Marana is home to two of the region's active master-planned communities: Dove Mountain, a community at the base of the Tortolita Mountains, and Gladden Farms, which has 600 homes built and an additional 1,400 planned in just its first phase.

Most of the growth is south of I-10 in agricultural areas. High-end growth has concentrated north of I-10, which also is where the federal government designated a giant swath of desert as habitat for pygmy owls. The pygmy owl may be de-listed as an endangered species in the near future, and it is unclear what impact that would have on land set aside for them.

It's not something Marana is paying much attention to at the moment, Town Manager Michael Reuwsaat said.

"We're doing about 150 home permits a month," he said. "We've developed and implemented the strictest design standards in the region, and the town has been fairly creative in getting the developers to pay for the infrastructure up front."

For example, the town, which recently completed building its new municipal complex, requires developers and home builders to pay construction sales taxes as well as impact fees to cover the costs of infrastructure. Still, it offers to credit them back some of the money as the infrastructure and amenities are put in place.

The result has been a mix of high-end, midrange and entry- level housing. The golf community of Dove Mountain, which sits at the base of the Tortolita Mountains and extends into several canyons there, is at the high end. Recently, its Gallery Golf Club was chosen as the site of a PGA Tour event, starting in 2007.

Paul Zucarelli and his wife, Beth, moved to Canyon Pass, a high-end section within Dove Mountain, about three years ago. They've been in love with their new home and development ever since.

"It's one of the best high-desert canyon settings in the state," said Zucarelli, who owns an employee benefits firm.

In fact, he was so impressed that he moved his mother into a home in Heritage Highlands, the active-adult section of Dove Mountain, and his adult children have a home in the Preserve at Dove Mountain.

"You have homes that young families can afford, and you have high-end million-dollar homes," he said. "My neighborhood has unbelievable spacing."

Steve Huffman, a state legislator who now is running for the congressional seat set to be vacated by the retiring Jim Kolbe, is a real estate agent for Realty Executives.

He said, "Marana has done a really good job of getting buy-in from the community. They are really the model.

"They are one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, and when they move forward on a plan, there's not a lot of controversy."

Seeking cheaper land
This year, the number of new-home permits for the entire metro area is expected to drop to about 10,200 permits as the frenetic pace of last year's buying frenzy cools, said John Strobeck, a housing market consultant who tracks the area's new-home activity.

Still, long-term, some are projecting new-home permits to reach 15,000 and beyond in the next five years.

This year, only 8,000 new homes will be built in Pima County. The rest will be in the neighboring counties of Pinal and Cochise. The percentage of new homes built outside Pima County's boundaries will continue to grow in subsequent years, Strobeck predicted.

Land prices have shot up in Pima County, sending developers across county lines in search of less expensive dirt to develop.

"We're seeing tons of leapfrog growth," said Strobeck, referring to developments that increasingly are on the fringes of metro Tucson. "There's no concentric growth."

A major reason for the spiraling land prices is the lack of availability of developable land. Although similar in size to Maricopa County, Pima County has but 821,000 acres of its nearly 6 million in private hands. That compares with about 1.8 million acres of private land in Maricopa County.

Much of Pima County's land is owned by the state and federal government. Indian reservations also take up more than 40 percent of the county's land mass.

"Land is beginning to be a problem," said Marshall Vest, a senior economist at the University of Arizona, who follows the housing industry closely.

The land squeeze could be eased by the state Land Department as it begins to auction off some of its holdings, but those auctions have yet to occur.

The department did open an office there last year and is planning to hold several auctions this year, although the parcels are small by developer standards, ranging from 40 to 400 acres.

High land prices have in turn led to higher home prices. In February, the median price of a new home was $254,000, up from $219,000, in the same month in 2005.

Affordability issues
Other factors driving up prices were speculators, who bought homes with the intention of flipping them for profits; rising costs for construction materials; and government-required impact fees paid by developers and home builders. The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association maintains that government-imposed impact fees tack on an average of $16,000 to the price of a new home in the Tucson area.

That may be one reason developers increasingly have catered to high-end consumers with bigger, more expensive homes.

"Developers can look to build densely packed affordable homes or go after the higher-income marketplace," Huffman said. "It seems like the focus has been on the higher end the last couple of years."

Even on the resale side, the past few years have been tough for first-time home buyers, he added. "It's an issue we, as a community, have to work on, and it won't be solved overnight."

To make way for the growth and to balance conservation, Pima County created the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan two years ago to limit building in unincorporated parts of the county, further cutting into developable land. Also, a federal designation of land as critical habitat for the endangered pygmy owl shut off areas for growth.

The number of active master-planned communities could triple in the next few years, said Will White, head of the Tucson office for Arizona Land Advisors, a land brokerage firm.

"We've got a really unique area here," he said. "The challenge will be integrating the beauty of the desert with the amount of growth and people moving here."

[kaneui]

With a new transportation plan up for voters' approval next month, Tucson looks at the transportation lessons of Phoenix, as more freeways are no longer the answer they were once thought to be, with construction costs spiraling and revised laws requiring multimodal transportation funding:


Think you might see more of these big Phoenix freeways replicated in Tucson? Think again.

The 202 intersection with the Hohokam Expressway (Arizona 143) near Sky Harbor Airport



Construction on Loop 202 near Alma School Rd., Nov. 2004



Southbound 101 in Scottsdale approaching the interchange with the 202





Looking north for transit lessons
Phoenix happy enough to renew its half-cent tax

By Tim Ellis
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
4.16.2006

PHOENIX — Twenty years after voters here approved plans to build a series of roadways to relieve congestion, and a half-cent sales tax to pay for them, rush-hour traffic still crawls and, in some areas, grinds to a stop. Occasional gridlock notwithstanding, Valley of the Sun voters were happy enough with the results that in 2004 they approved a second 20-year plan.

They also renewed the half-cent-per-dollar sales tax to raise some $16 billion, for two more loop freeways, more lanes and extensions for existing freeway loops and to boost transit, including a 27.7-mile light-rail system. That voter confidence was born of a recognition that Phoenix-area traffic congestion is not as bad as it would have been if they hadn't passed the first 20-year transportation-improvement plan, said Eric Anderson, transportation director for the Maricopa Association of Governments.

With Pima County voters going to the polls next month to decide on their own transportation plan and tax, some may wonder what they can learn from metro Phoenix's last two decades of laying asphalt. There, about 138 miles of loop roads and freeway-like parkways were built under the first 20-year transportation plan, passed in 1985. But rapid growth in and around Phoenix since then has dumped more cars into the system than the authors of that ambitious plan could have anticipated.

Even with the sales-tax renewal, officials are scrambling to get the state to pay for other road-building and widening projects to catch up with explosive growth in outlying areas fueled by cheaper home prices — a scenario that is now starting to duplicate itself in northern Pima and southern Pinal counties. "The numbers are just staggering," Anderson said of up to 600,000 homes that could be built in Pinal County alone in the coming years.

One of the biggest successes of the Maricopa plan was the construction of Loop 101, which loops around the north side of Phoenix and connects Interstate 10 from around Tolleson on the west side to the booming cities of Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Chandler on the east. "One of the things that we did right was build loop roads," Anderson said. "It was the right place, the right time for that."

Phoenix-area plan succeeded
Studies by the Texas Transportation Institute confirm the Phoenix area has improved its ability to handle peak rush-hour traffic more than most major metro areas, said Tim Lomax, a researcher with the institute. From 1982 through 2003, the average amount of time Phoenix-area motorists spent in rush-hour traffic increased from 18 to 45 hours, according to the institute's 2005 mobility report, while the population of the Phoenix metro area more than doubled, from 1.4 million to 3 million, Lomax said. But the Phoenix area's ranking among 85 metro areas studied by the institute greatly improved, from the sixth-most-congested city in the country in '82 to 18th in '03.

During the same time, Tucson's population grew from 450,000 to 720,000. Rush-hour travel time, though, went from five hours to 36 hours, and the city's congestion ranking went from 51st to 30th — still not as bad as Phoenix, but a significant move in the wrong direction. That slide in traffic conditions means Pima County voters are facing a situation that's starting to resemble what their counterparts in Maricopa County confronted in 1985. But the 20-year transportation plan Pima voters will consider on May 16, along with a half-cent sales tax to support it, will be very different from Maricopa's first plan.

Maricopa went for freeways
Like Tucson, Phoenix in 1985 was a growing city surrounded by even faster growing suburbs that were dumping huge amounts of traffic on roadways designed for far fewer vehicles. Also like Tucson, the main thoroughfares in and around Phoenix were the two major freeways, Interstates 10 and 17, and three state highways, Arizona 51, 60 and 87.

But while the Maricopa county response was a plan devoted almost exclusively to freeways and parkways, Pima County voters will see no such thing on their ballot. Instead, the roadway-building portion of the plan proposes 35 projects that mainly would add more lanes to nine east-west and nine north-south arterial streets. Only 58 percent of estimated $2.1 billion to be raised goes for roads at all. The rest goes for transit, bike and pedestrian facilities, safety and environmental impacts.

Anderson said the Pima plan's no-freeway approach makes sense to him, because the Tucson area already is built-out — which makes roads much more expensive to construct. "It's always better to build roads before development comes in," he said.

Keno Hawker, mayor of Mesa and chairman of the Maricopa Association of Governments, said the freeway concept worked for the Phoenix area 20-some years ago but probably wouldn't now — either there or in Pima County.
"In Maricopa County, we were so lacking in freeways that that's where all the money was spent," Hawker said. "But that was then. Times have changed. You can't necessarily do that now."

Victor Mendez, director of the Arizona Department of Transportation, said his agency — which built Maricopa County's parkway and loop network — learned a lot from the experience. "We had to build in some areas that were already urbanized," he said. "Other areas that were wide open, agricultural land, they were easier to build in, but still cost a lot of time and money to buy and condemn for right of way — even more if we had to relocate businesses.
"In many cases we'd end up in court for long periods of time," Mendez said.

Freeways too costly
Tim Ahrens, RTA manager, said the high cost of building large roadways like a crosstown parkway persuaded the RTA board and staff to scale back an initial idea to use some of the $2.1 billion to complete the Barraza-Aviation Parkway. "We looked at a freeway initially — we looked at it long and hard, and we decided we'd use up all the money just with that one project," he said. Realizing this, members of the RTA board last summer voted to drop a $200 million proposal to complete the eastern end of the unfinished parkway and instead opted to buy right-of-way land and design a connection to I-10 for $19.6 million. The plan still includes $76.1 million for a one-mile, four-lane roadway to connect the western end of the Aviation Parkway from where it ends at Broadway to I-10, via St. Mary's Road.

Another factor that makes road-building more expensive here is Phoenix is relatively flat, whereas Tucson, surrounded by mountains, is more hilly and crisscrossed with washes. That requires construction of culverts and other drainage structures, which are critical to protecting roadways from the eroding effects of water. That kind of terrain "makes it really expensive to build roads," Anderson said.

State, federal requirements
Ahrens said Tucson also has to take a different approach than the earlier Phoenix plan because the current state law authorizing formation of the RTA requires plans for several modes of transportation, as do federal transportation laws, said David Schwartz, a longtime Phoenix transit advocate. Because of that — and a growing desire for transportation alternatives fueled by, among other things, rising gasoline prices — public transit and other modes are becoming an important part of transportation plans, said Schwartz, a former deputy chief of staff for former Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza.

*Transportation election May 16*


Pima, Maricopa transportation plans — a comparison

Similarities
l Main source of revenue: a half-cent sales tax approved by voters.

l Audits required twice annually — although that was not required for the first Maricopa plan until reforms were enacted in the mid-1990s because of financial problems caused by lower-than-anticipated revenues and higher-than-anticipated costs.

l Plans administered by the regional council of governments: the Maricopa Association of Governments in Maricopa County and the Pima Association of Governments in Pima. Although formally speaking, the Pima plan would be managed by a separate entity known as the Regional Transportation Authority, both PAG and the RTA share the same staff and leadership; the PAG regional council sits as the RTA board.

Differences
l The first Maricopa plan was almost entirely devoted to road-building; the Pima plan is more varied — 58 percent of the tax revenues would go to road-building; 27 percent to public transit; 9 percent to safety improvements, including bicycle and pedestrian facilities; and 6 percent to environment and economic assistance.

l Roads built under the first Maricopa plan mainly were larger roadways such as parkways and expressways; the Pima plan includes no such roadway — almost all of the Pima roadway projects would go to widening existing east-west and north-south arterials.

l The Arizona Department of Transportation built the freeways and parkways in the Maricopa plan; ADOT plays a much smaller role in the Pima plan, mainly coordinating with local jurisdictions in projects involving state or interstate highways.

[kaneui]

Tucson to receive its 1st hotel casino

Stephanie Paterik
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 20, 2006 12:00 AM

The Tohono O'odham Nation will break ground on Tucson's first casino hotel Monday, continuing a growing trend among Arizona's gaming tribes. The community will build a new Desert Diamond Casino next to the old one on the Nogales Highway and add an adjoining hotel, conference center and restaurants. Once construction is done, it will knock down the oldest Desert Diamond casino, which opened in 1993 and is showing signs of age.

Details about the project will not be released until next week. The development will break new ground in southern Arizona, said Treena Parvello, a spokeswoman for the project. "We'll be the first casino in Tucson to have a hotel," she said. "We will try and maintain business as much as we can (during construction)." Desert Diamond's expansion is the latest example of Arizona tribes building on the success of their casinos.

The Salt River Indian Community plans to build a casino hotel up to 15 stories tall to replace Casino Arizona at Talking Stick's temporary facilities, northeast of Loop 101 and Indian Bend Road. Harrah's Phoenix Ak-Chin Casino Resort is considering an expansion or "repositioning," according to Warnick & Co., a consulting firm that tracks the local lodging industry. And the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation opened a Radisson in November.

The Gila River Indian Community began expanding Vee Quiva Casino in January. It researched the feasibility of building a hotel near the Wild Horse Pass Casino south of Phoenix but tabled the idea. Instead, it will consider building a ballroom and timeshares at the nearby Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa in the near term and adding guest rooms in the long term.

Lower interest
The spate of new development is a result of the compacts Arizona voters approved in 2002, ensuring gambling would continue for 23 years. That guarantee is helping tribes finance big projects at lower interest rates, said Christa Severns, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Gaming.

"The reason tribes needed that (compact) is it gives you enough time to tell your lenders you have a guaranteed funding stream," she said. Those compacts allow for just one more casino in Tucson and no additional casinos in Maricopa County. That limit is forcing tribes to upgrade the casinos they have and diversify with hotels, conference centers, theme parks and golf courses to increase revenue. "A lot of casinos are working on remodeling and updating," Severns said. "People were concerned there would be unbridled growth in the casino industry. No, it's just an improvement of facilities."

Jobs created
Desert Diamond's new hotel will create jobs on the reservation and attract Phoenix residents, said Sheila Morago, executive director of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association. "Sometimes you don't have enough time to go away, but it's a nice break to sit by someone else's pool and get waited on," she said. "It allows locals to have a mini vacation."

[Don B.]

^ Interesting.

Tucson still needs a beltway badly. It takes currently 40 minutes to drive 10 miles from Marana to Sabino Canyon. This is hampering economic development as companies are locating in Phoenix, where it is easier to get around, than Tucson.

If Tucson is not going to build a beltway, then they need to build a dedicated BRT or light rail line instead.

Myopic vision = future pain and even worse congestion. Pay now or pay later - the rule is always the same.

Because of the relative lack of economic development, Tucson is even more unaffordable than Phoenix. They have nearly the same real estate costs, but wages are depressed and are fully 20% less than Phoenix.

--don

[soleri]

^It's hard for me to see how a beltway helps Tucson. What it would do is magnfiy the opportunity for sprawl. As we've seen here in Phoenix, freeways always open up more far-flung tracts of land for housing. If you love urbanism, freeways are toxic. If you love the desert, freeways are doubly horrifying.

Tucson's economy is actually MORE diversified than Phoenix. That's not saying much (Raytheon and IBM can only go so far), but it's important to note that the economy is less dependent on the real estate-industrial complex than Phoenix. Lower-paying McJobs (service jobs which get spun off from sprawl-related functions) represent most of the job growth in Maricopa County.

Real estate costs can be seen as a quality-of-life tax. Very nice places always cost more to live in. That people are willing to pay more to live with less actually is a sign of value. While the overall quality of life in Tucson is declining (I went to school there back in the 70s and it was magical), living can be much more pleasant than in Phoenix, especially if you bicycle, walk or take the bus.

As far as getting to your aunt's house in Sabino Canyon, count your blessings. Tucson's eventual implosion will be far less catastrophic than the one in Phoenix. And when it does come, there will still be one of most magnificent topographies on Earth to enjoy. Sad to say, the one in Phoenix will have been mostly bladed away.

[Don B.]

^ Well, the beltway I envision encircling Tucson paralleling River Road wouldn't do much to further sprawl, because most of the sprawl has already moved on to farther out places in the Tucson metro area. What it would do is facilitate normal travel around the city possible without spending half an hour in congested auto traffic to get a bottle of milk. Nasty narrow potholed roads with no sidewalks or curbs and swinging traffic lights from cheap cables does not an urban paradise make. Tucson isn't urban or even suburban, it's just raw and primitive. The city screams CHEAP because the people there want low taxes above all else. That's why the wealthier half of the metro area is in unincorporated areas. They don't want to pay "city taxes" or be subject to the "hegemony" of the city of Tucson.

If Tucson's economy is so grand, why is Phoenix's per capita and household income so much higher? Why is Phoenix's new job market much more vibrant than Tucson's, with much higher salaries? How many skyscrapers are going up in Tucson? Logic would dictate that a metro area that is one-fourth the size of Phoenix have one-fourth of the high-rise construction of Phoenix, yet Tucson basically has nothing going on. Nothing. It's not even one-tenth or one-twentieth that of Phoenix.

--don

[soleri]

^, what you're arguing for is not a beltway but a crosstown freeway. I know River Road is to the north, but in the overall metro area, it's still in the middle. I'm glad I don't have to drive in Tucson, so I can afford to be selfish here. If Tucson can hang out for a decade or two, sanity might emerge in this country about sprawl, high energy consumption, and the entire automotive-based castastrophe. In my fantasy, Tucson develops light rail, streetcar lines, relevant TOD, and a density ethic. If this doesn't materialize, at least Tucson will still have a kind of funky charm in our post-petroleum, post-industrial poverty. Arizona doesn't need two Phoenixes.

I don't argue Tucson's economy is better so much as diversified. Again, sprawl has usurped what was once a mixed economy in Phoenix. It's Tucson, not Phoenix, which is actually better situated for the future. At some point, and it may not be that far off, the sprawl industry collapses from its own contradictions. At that point, Tucson will still have significant economic contributions (relative to its size) from non-real estate industries.

Tucson made a critical error in the 1970s by limiting annexations. The Catalina Foothills neighborhoods didn't want to be annexed, of course, but Tucson should have been more aggressive nonetheless. The thinking at the time was that Tucson would somehow limit growth by imposing its own boundary. We can see how naive that is now.

It's interesting that Tucson has so little high-rise construction. Part of this is the gravitational pull of Phoenix, and the emerging fact that Tucson is now a satellite of The Blob. You could make a comparison to San Diego and LA. SD's economy is strong, and there is a lot of high-rise condo construction going on. But SD is otherwise completely in LA's shadow. Tucson's best strategy, however, is not simply to pull the plug and adopt the Phoenix strategy of hyper-exburban growth. If Tucson can resist the siren song of freeways, there is an opportunity for growth at the core, especially as fuel escalates in cost. This is a strategy that may even help Phoenix down the road. As skyscraper enthusiasts, we can both agree that density at the core is a good thing. You get there by not feeding the monster of suburbanization, which is what freeways do.

[Don B.]

^ I disagree about your general concept of freeways. They don't always feed suburban development. Suburban sprawl can occur all by itself without freeways. Phoenix was basically nothing but sprawl in 1975 before the coming of the Loops, part of I-10, US 60 and SR 51. In fact, Phoenix became the largest city in the U.S. with virtually no freeways by 1985, when Maricopa County taxpayers, likely fed up with the ever-worsening congestion, passed the first half-cent sales tax.

To make my point even more clear, in 1980, Phoenix and Kansas City were about the same size in terms of their metro populations. Phoenix was at 1.5 million and Kansas City was at 1.3 million. Phoenix had virtually no freeways and Kansas City had 316 miles of freeways completed, including one complete beltway (I-435) and parts of two more (I-470 and I-635). Yet, both cities have suffered from immense sprawl since World War II. The only reason why KC has more skyscrapers is because it is a considerably older city than Phoenix, and KC was once much larger than Phoenix.

The freeway in Tucson I mentioned before, running east along River Road from I-10, then looping south along Pantano Wash to I-10 again on the southeast side, then heading west by the airport on the south side of town before turning north on the near west side is not a simple "crosstown freeway" as you put it, and I apologize for not being more clear about my thought process here. I envision a true, albeit small beltway, and one sorely needed in that congested burg. Building this small beltway will not "turn Tucson into Phoenix." Tucson will never be as large as Phoenix and we can both agree that is a good thing. However, Tucson today is the largest city in the United States without a beltway. Heck, cities less than half the size of Tucson back east like Wichita, Sioux Falls and Omaha have beltways.

I think building such a small beltway in Tucson, along with light rail to all four points of the compass from downtown, would serve Tucson's economic interests much better than the "head-in-the-sand" approach that city is following now. Again, pay now or pay later...the day is coming when such things will be sorely needed.

I'll sum up my thoughts on Tucson like this: Today, Kansas City has almost 2 million people. Tucson has about half as many people, yet it is far easier to get around Kansas City than Tucson.

--don

[somethingfast]

^^ You both make good arguments. I live in Tucson and I sympathize with both angles. My feeling is that Tucson is hopelessly lost. We have a totally clueless city council and little leadership anywhere for that matter.

I do think SOME sort of cross-town freeway or a mini-loop around the Rillito River is totally necessary. Beyond that, I agree that we should encourage infill and density, which can be done of course through tax incentives, etc.

DT Tucson is absolutely pathetic. The kicker is that it has lots of potential. It's actually much "nice" in setting that DT Phoenix, by a country mile. But the city does NOTHING to encourage private investment, which is the source of investment on the horizon given political climate.

I love Tucson and I hate it. Nobody wants nor expects it to be another Phoenix. It will always be in Phoenix's shadow and that's fine. The trouble is, Tucson is in a constant state of paralysis bc is it overwhelmed by its fears of Phoenix, and most of them them are totally unfounded.

[oliveurban]

Originally Posted by somethingfast

Nobody wants nor expects it to be another Phoenix. It will always be in Phoenix's shadow and that's fine. The trouble is, Tucson is in a constant state of paralysis bc is it overwhelmed by its fears of Phoenix, and most of them them are totally unfounded.

I definitely agree with this.