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Originally Posted by AZ71
1) Kozachik failed Broadway be eliminating a lane therefore eliminating the chance of the trolley expansion down that lane eastward.
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They didn't eliminate a lane, they widened the street. Blank canvas my man.
I was pretty sure any streetcar extensions were to be on Speedway anyways.
Was there some contingent to extend the streetcar on Broadway or what? Most cities don't plan transit on streets this close to each other.
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2) I understand historic preservation. Saving the Chase Building and Broadway Plaza at Broadway & Country Club is 100% correct. Saving googie-style Welcome Diner (former Sambo's) was a good move. But these other buildings you speak of are insignificant to the amount of money to restore them. And if the city had some kind of architecture requirements and guidelines (like Santa Barbara and Pasadena does) you wouldn't get a mishmash of different buildings and plazas like Phx. But saving these old crumbling buildings with asbestos was a huge waste of money. I also disagree with saving the 4 bungalows and relocating them back away from the street. Not worth the money long term to save 4 houses from an era gone by when they were just houses. You can find those same 4 homes one street back in the neighborhood. There is no reason to force repurpose them. That costs incredible amounts of money to build professional kitchens and exhausts and fire codes, etc.
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With historic preservation, I often defer to the Jane Jacobs approach that any old building is worth saving.
What's the alternative? Demolishing them and letting the crummy market catch up?
Having a rentable building with character is a good thing. Those buildings can't get rented any faster in Phoenix.
Those same bungalows were the guts of the Roosevelt Arts District's commercial activities and are often repurposed for the same.
The other part was rehabbing the buildings was the best way to mitigate the impact of the street widening itself.
Honestly my take is that preserving those buildings after a condemnation proceeding was incredibly forward thinking and not at all a regression.
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3) They weren't talking about 16 story buildings down Broadway. Merely 6-8 stories and there is demand for that. They just built THE MARK apartments on Broadway across from Welcome Diner that are 8 stories. The desire and need is there. They cant build housing quick enough but to prohibit that, or even office space which I mentioned is already there...is ridiculous and another form of letting people dictate the progression of a city and it biting us in our behinds a decade+ later. If there is any street to have tall buildings on its Broadway Blvd going to the city centers on the east end.
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I thought I read 16 stories was contemplated and the neighborhoods relegated it to 4.
I did say that 4 was too low and 6 - 8 is respondent to market demands with modern building codes.
The Mark, however, is... downright terrible.
Unscreened garage on the perimeter, overly wide unusable setbacks with needless atrociously ugly fencing, no pedestrian entrances on its whole length on Broadway, weird stepped back massing... The thing is literally the worst modern building I've ever seen.
It seems like it tries to comprehend 2020 buildings with 1980s Tucson design standards and fails at even that. I cannot even imagine the hell the developers went through to do that, and if that was intentional everyone involved should be fired. If that went through design review and approved that committee should be straight up sent to prison.
I can't even imagine the design choices that went into this. It's like somebody took the worst of dated Scottsdale urban design and injected it with a cocktail of crack and meth. Like, I kind of get it ... it "fits" in the urban nightmare of Broadway ... in the worst possibly designed street ever. A street that makes an absolute mockery of the desert it's supposed to preserve.
James Howard Kunstler would have a field day about this "nature bandaid."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jBMP7mjmno&t=652s
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4) Yes, apparently getting buildings built or approved is a pain in the butt and that needs to stop. I gather its mainly from people like Kozachik who then rally for a few people in his Ward 6 that don't want it. It ruins everything. Tucson is a great city! I think thats why we're all on here trying to give our opinions on how to grow it and make it world-class and make it better. But I can tell you building THE FLIN downtown on TCC property did not help one bit. La Placita has the right concept. But it was old and wonky. They should have built one tall residential HSL tower and the rest should have been restaurants, retail, etc. Where on earth are convention center attendee's supposed to even eat? There is NOTHING around there but a Subway and Bruegger's Bagles all the way over on Congress & Stone. There is just no planning in our downtown. They spent $5m to lure conventions here but if there aren't services around it...they wont come back.
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I don't think it's about Kozachik in particular. I definitely think he's the byproduct of his ward however because that's almost always how things happen. The problems I'm seeing are with city staff themselves and a general mentality that somehow approves crap like The Mark and everyone, including Kozachik's district thinks this is ok.
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