Author: jsethanderson

I say often that Phoenix should have listened to Jane Jacobs (and that is my firm conviction) but how can the city listen to her, if they don’t know who she is?

Jane Jacobs was an activist (most famous for taking on and defeating the City of Manhattan and the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway) and urbanist who championed dense, walkable cities over car-centered and car-dependent cities.

She articulated the ideas and the elements that must be integrated to build great cities, such as identity, a sense of place, civic pride, connection to heritage and history, and pedestrian friendly streets with healthy and defined neighborhoods.

Most people who have grown up in Valley don’t quite understand the concept of a neighborhood. With few exceptions we don’t have a strong sense of neighborhoods and we lack that sense of community and belonging that other cities have. That’s not to say “community” doesn’t exist in Phoenix, it does, but on a much smaller scale.

If you don’t believe we have community, please come out to the 2010 Jane’s Walk on May 1st in the Warehouse District. Get out of the car and walk on the city streets because you’ll be amazed and pleasantly surprised. Come learn about the beautiful and historic warehouses and the ways that they have been adapted for reuse. Jane Jacobs is known for saying that “new ideas require old buildings” and there are many in the Warehouse District.  Come celebrate local Phoenix history and learn about the things we have in our city that we can be proud of. And it’s a free event!

“No one can find what will work for our cities by
looking at suburban garden cities, manipulating
scale models, or inventing dream cities.
You’ve got to get out and walk.”

– Jane Jacobs

Some people dream about the career they want. Some dream about fame and fortune. I dream about restoring historic buildings. So if you will, please permit me a moment to dream and share my visions.

In my dream I would buy a piece of prime property in Downtown Phoenix and rebuild the Fleming Building in all its original glory, complete with the basement bowling alley. I wouldn’t be able to build on the original location, but I would get as close as possible to the original footprint and I would happily demolish any parking lot to construct this building. I would build the Fleming Building up to the street to encourage pedestrian activity, just like it did when it stood proudly on the streets of Downtown. I would build it according to its original human scale, with the original and beautiful craftsmanship of brick and stone. Chicken wire, plywood, or stucco would not be allowed anywhere near this building!

The space inside could be used for a million things that make a city a city. In my newly rebuilt Fleming Building there could be any number of business and community-building ventures. Like a restaurant, a bar, a café, perhaps a museum, offices, a community center, artist space, residences, maybe hotel rooms. Even small things like a Laundromat, a hardware store, a grocery store, a drug store, a flower shop, a bakery. The options are limitless.

The purpose of rebuilding the Fleming Building would not be to make a profit. I would rebuild it for the purpose of creating value and character for the city that I love, to help Phoenix once again become beautiful and hospitable and functional.

In Downtown Phoenix we have lost so many of our points of reference and without those spaces we have lost the parts of our community that connect us to our past and define us as a city.

I’m convinced my dream doesn’t have to remain a dream, but perhaps I’m just young and naive. I have a firm conviction that with foresight, planning, and respect for the existing and remaining historical buildings this dream (or something close to it) can come true. Why should Phoenix be a city of dreams or a city where historic buildings live only in our memory?

My grandmother is one of these people.

By happenstance in May 1958 she was passing through Phoenix with her two young kids and they checked in at the Sahara. As the sun set, it melted the colors of the sky into a glorious Phoenix sunset. The yellow, orange, and red and every color in between  blazed and singed the clouds. My grandma said she had never seen anything like it and as she sat poolside at the Sahara, breathing in the scent of orange blossoms while listening to the rustling of the palm trees and watching her kids splash around in the cool water, she promised herself she would move to Phoenix.

“I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how, but I knew I would,” she told me.

She moved to Phoenix in 1961 and has been here ever since. The Sahara, and many other resorts like it (that have been razed) were instrumental in shaping Phoenix in the middle of the 20th Century.

The Sahara was built by Del Webb, the namesake for ASU’s own School of Construction which boasts of its collaboration that creates ASU’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment. ASU claims to be “the model of sustainability” and the City promotes sustainable development, but in razing the Ramada, there is nothing that is sustainable, Earth-friendly, or revitalizing. 

We all know that the most sustainable building is the building that is already built. The historic A.E. England building was nearly demolished to make way for the Civic Space Park but people like me and the Downtown Voices Coalition and the Historic Preservation Bond Committee and Commission fought to save that part of our history. We’ll fight to save the Ramada Inn as well.

Mid-century buildings are the next set of historic properties and Phoenix has not learned that tearing them down is bad. If the city never learns from the past, they will repeat it. It’s about to repeat now if Phoenix razes this building for another parking lot. Phoenix, you must stop destroying your history for parking lots!

The Ramada Inn has potential to bring in a constant stream of revenue and value to the city that a parking lot never will. Never. A parking lot does not make a city. It only creates vacant blight that plagues the eye.

Think “Long Term” Phoenix. You say you need more parking for the Sheraton. But if you tear down the Ramada to make a parking lot and then let ASU build something on that site “in the future” you’re still going to have a parking problem at the Sheraton. What will you tear down then?

Phoenix, use the assets that already exist Downtown to your advantage and the city will be infinitely better because of it.

Say what you will about the floating sculpture in Downtown Phoenix, but it’s magnificent. I’ve heard it referred to as a jellyfish, a uterus, a travesty, beautiful, bold, stupid, a waste. It was installed on March 18, 2009 and even when it was just a rendering it caused such a hullabaloo between people (like me) defending it and people who wanted to see it never happen. It’s fascinating that before the sculpture was even it up it caused so much dialogue but that is exactly what public art should do: bring people together to discuss ideas. Downtown Phoenix is lacking in quality public space and this piece was designed to be part of a new park that was under construction. The park is now open and is next to a light rail station, the new ASU Downtown campus, and Central Station in the heart of Downtown. (Local blogger Yuri Artibise wrote about the pros and cons of the park in a piece here.)

Overall, I like the park and think it has the potential to become a destination, and the floating sculpture will be a main driver behind that. I predict the sculpture will become iconic, something that people who visit the city will go home and say, “You’ll never believe what I saw in Phoenix.”

The piece, officially titled Her Secret is Patience, is the work of Janet Echelman, an artist who has done similar projects in major cities around the world. She said that she drew her inspiration from the vast Arizona sky and Saguaro blossoms. Some people call it a jellyfish and I don’t mind that comparison. After all, this part of the world was covered by the ocean millions of years ago. It is possible that actual jellyfish did float around in water above what is now known as Downtown Phoenix which makes the sculpture even more relevant. I’ve never seen anything like it. The sculpture is beautiful, unique and colorful. The way the netting ripples and dances silently in the breeze is hypnotic. I had to catch my breath the first time I saw it and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I wanted to take photographs and look at it from different angles. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to spend hours at the park admiring the new addition to our city.

Art, by definition, should say something. This sculpture says that Phoenix is a city willing to think outside the box and is ready to grow up and have its own identity. Creating such a unique pedestrian location, not on the fringes of the city, but smack-dab in the middle is an achievement of people thinking smart and big and is a major step forward for a city so dependent on cars.

The City of Phoenix has an interesting past with public art. During the construction of the 51, a lot of money was spent installing public art along the freeway. The art consisted of oversized ceramic pots on the side of a major road. I have one main objection: the art was on the side of a major road! A person cannot truly appreciate art while flying by it at 65+ mph and giving it an accidental glance.

But Her Secret is Patience is in a public park that people can get to by walking or taking the light rail. It’s in a park where the community can gather and relax and sit under trees and read and throw a football.

I hope this will be a catalyst that brings more people with vision to Phoenix because the city needs better vision and new ideas. We need better architecture, pedestrian friendly streets, and reasons to be downtown. Her Secret is Patience is just the beginning.

The Phoenix City Council made (another) terrible decision regarding the re-development of Downtown. Apparently we have all been slightly misled because the City of Phoenix is not broke after all! In fact, they have $5 million bucks stashed away in a mattress somewhere, $5 million they will use to buy the Ramada Inn just to tear it down.

The Ramada Inn is one of the only buildings in Downtown Phoenix that is built correctly because it is built up to the street. Streetfront retail on city blocks is an absolutely necessary component of an urban city. It encourages pedestrians to walk and shop, which creates a healthy, vibrant, urban street. Street front retail is like a membrane of a cell and it allows economic activity to pass in and out. This membrane is missing from Downtown Phoenix.

To make matters worse the city has voted to tear down the Ramada Inn. The land will be used for…wait for it…parking! Yes, more heat absorbing, pedestrian hostile, useless, valueless, asphalt.

I sent emails to the entire City Council a few weeks ago begging them not to approve any demolitions. I don’t care if the city buys the land and the building, but why demolish what is there for more parking? It would be one thing if there were actually plans to break ground within 90 days to bring to the city a mixed use building, something with a residential component, retail, entertainment or restaurants. Instead, the Ramada Inn will be razed to build another parking lot for the Sheraton, the 1970s Las Vegas-style, turd-looking hotel the City owns. Why does the Sheraton need more parking?!

The Council says that eventually this land will be part of the future ASU expansion, but it’s not like there is a shortage of land Downtown where ASU could expand. The City owns plenty of land that could be developed before anything else is erased.

There has to be a shift in the way local politicians and the people of Phoenix think about development. If anyone from the Phoenix City Council is reading this, I beg you to send me an email and explain your rationale behind this foolish decision. More parking lots will only feed the suburban blob that ate Downtown Phoenix.

A mix of eclectic buildings, the old next to the new, is a great thing. Perhaps if Phoenix stopped knocking buildings down as if they are nothing more than a house of cards then Phoenix might actually feel like a real city, instead of some suburban hellhole where everything is sterile, bland and boring beyond belief.

Shame on you, Phoenix City Council.

Oakville Grocery will be opening in Downtown Phoenix as part of the CityScape project. Originally AJ’s had signed a lease but when Basha’s ran into financial trouble they pulled out of the project, leaving us all to wonder who would take their place. I was hoping for a Fresh & Easy or a Trader Joe’s although I never thought that either were a likely possibility.

Looking at Oakville’s Web site, I see the store has the look and feel of a Trader Joe’s but it also looks…expensive or just too fancy for Downtown. I don’t know a lot of Downtown residents who would really benefit from an expensive grocery store. Will it be possible to pop in here for a gallon of milk and not pay close to 4 bucks? Can I get a cheap loaf of regular bread here on a Sunday afternoon or will it be those loafs of artisan bread covered in birdseed mix for $4.99?

There hasn’t been a grocery store in Downtown Phoenix since I was born, so I guess anything is better than nothing but this seems like a bad choice to me. I wish them luck and I hope I’m wrong, but at least there is a CVS going into CityScape because that is more my speed.

Good news for Downtown Phoenix: Pie Zanos is rumored to be opening a location in the Luhrs Tower on Jefferson between Central and 1st Avenue.

The redevelopment of that block, a project known as the Luhrs City Center is stunning, both in how it looks and that it is actually being completed. The project respects the historical importance of this site and original structures and mixes the old art deco style with the the modern. The redevelopment is thrilling and I stand behind it. (There is talk of the “D” word, Demolition, for part of the block, specifically the 1914 Luhrs Central Building on Madison and Central.) I think that this particular part of the plan totally sucks and I’m surprised that a city like Phoenix with so few historic structures left manages to find ways to knock down the ones still standing. The promise is that there will be a new, 200 foot high hotel built on the site.

I’ve heard that before. I’ve lived in Phoenix long enough to know what that means.

But so far this developer isn’t just talking the talk and flashing pretty architectural renderings of their proposed vision. The Luhrs Building and Luhrs Tower have been renovated, people are working in those buildings and space has been leased to new tenants, like (maybe) Pie Zanos. I wasn’t able to dig up more specifics on possible tenants, but I’ve got my eyes and ears open. If I owned a business, this is where I’d want to be.

I’m putting down my cheerleader pom poms to take a serious and critical look at Downtown.
This is a Google Map of Downtown Phoenix. (I concede it’s not the most recent, but this photo still reflects the overall state and condition of Downtown.) Look at those empty, embarrassing dirt lots. And that surface parking! This looks and feels nothing like an urban city, but more like a rural farming community. East Mesa has more infill than this!

And that’s my problem.

With the explosion of growth in the past 40-50 years in the Valley, why has hardly any of it happened in the center? There is something fundamentally wrong with a city that can attract developers to build houses and amenities 40-plus miles removed from the Central Corridor but that is unable get anything built in that Central Corridor. Where are the laundromats? The drug stores? The grocery stores?! The residences? The gyms? The post offices? The restaurants? Where is the landscaping?
I’ve been told that land in Downtown Phoenix is expensive. What exactly makes this land so expensive? It’s not like it’s sitting next to an ocean, or Central Park.
Does the City of Phoenix own most of this land? Then let me make a suggestion: City of Phoenix, STOP land banking. You’re in a financial crisis, REZONE this empty land and sell it to the highest bidder and let them build whatever they want to build. What are you doing, Phoenix City Council, to make this land ripe for development? Phoenix, if you don’t own this land, raise the property tax on vacant lots. Create the incentive to build something, anything on this land. (A public garden perhaps.) Be more aggressive. Whatever it is you’ve been doing for the past 30 years is not working.
According to the Phoenix.gov Web site, “Projections show the region is expected to grow by nearly 60 percent by 2030, bringing the population to more than 6 million people.”
Imagine if merely 1 percent of that growth happened in Downtown. Just 1 percent and Downtown Phoenix would be unrecognizable.
I don’t buy the argument that “people in Phoenix don’t want to live in a city.” Bull! There are plenty of people who come to Phoenix or who are from Phoenix that would love a true urban life. I do. All my friends do. But many of my friends are tired of waiting and have left Phoenix for more urban pastures in other cities.
I appreciate the beauty and majesty of a skyscraper as much as anyone else, but a skyscraper does not a city make! A city must grow organically, from the ground up, to be healthy. There are too many vacant lots that must be filled to create the street scape and amenities necessary before we reach for the sky.

By random accident I discovered my latest passion: Arizona wine. If you’re thinking that Arizona cannot grow grapes or produce wine, then you are doing what experts call “making a mistake.” Imagine for a moment that you are part of a small wine producing community making great wine but that the wine drinkers of the world, people concerned with only names and regions, brush your product aside with a grimace. Of course I’m describing the early days of Napa Valley, which is today a well respected wine producing region. Arizona wine is still fairly new and unknown in the wine world, but is receiving positive attention and acclaim from those daring to venture into new wine territories.

I’m not a wine connoisseur by any means (I prefer Miller Lite or a bottle of whiskey) but I know what I don’t like, and I generally do not prefer red wine. But while shopping in the Phoenix Public Market, I noticed a pretty extensive wine collection and started asking questions: “Where are the Arizona vineyards?”, “What wine does Maynard [the lead singer of the band Tool] make?”, “Does Arizona make white wines?”, “How much does a bottle cost?”, and “Can I try some?”

I was treated to a wine tasting, during which I transformed into a wine snob because I’ll only drink wine made in Arizona from now on. The flavor was rugged and rustic and bold and tasted like everything I love about this state: wide open spaces, the blue sky, extreme temperatures of cold and hot, breathtaking terrain, and an overwhelming variety of beauty and color. I really liked the Arizona Stronghold and bought two bottles of red wine, one called Magnus and the called Nachise.

Arizona has so much potential in so many ways, and the future of wine production in this state is looking good. This spring I’m going to check out a few of the wineries up north and down south to support and explore this local industry. Before you dismiss Arizona wines as some quaint little experiment in futility, stop by the Public Market and have a little taste test. You’ll be surprised and discover something new and exciting.