The CityScape proposal is nothing new for this city. Every few years some developer comes along with a project that is going to "save" downtown but fails in that colossal task. In the seventies, it was the civic plaza convention center. In the late 1980's, after the Boston Globe called downtown Phoenix a "surreal nightmare," we tried to save it with the Mercado and Arizona Center. In the nineties, it was US Airways Arena and Chase Field. This decade, the powers that be shoved Dodge Theatre down our throats and really wanted to jam the Cardinals Stadium downtown too. CityScape is just the latest variation in a series of megaprojects billed as the downtown savior.
Howeve, this time around, there was a difference. There was a mobilized opposition that had a major effect on the process. And it's been noticed: there's been chatter about it on the message boards and today the Republic's Doug MacEachern spends 25 column inches complaining about the public daring to insert itself in a process that he apparently believes should be left to the developers.
You can read MacEachern's column for yourself, but frankly I think he disqualifies himself from discussing the issue with any authority when he makes this comment: "on various Internet blogs...the opponents [of CityScape] argued that CityScape's design is just too suburban for them. I'm not entirely sure what this means..."
(MacEachern is the Republic editorial board's designated expert on downtown. I guess we really should expect nothing less from a newspaper that doesn't even employ an architecture critic.)
Anyway, MacEachern is essentially complaining about a breakdown of the old paradigm in Phoenix development, that LIDP reader Walt accurately describes as "accepting the developer's vision without complaint or suggestion." MacEachern argues that the message is being sent to developers that downtown is too difficult a place in which to do projects. (He ignores the fact that big-ticket projects such as Orpheum Lofts, 44 Monroe and Portland Place cruised through the city approval process with no opposition, because they were quality urban developments.) I agree with MacEachern that a message has been sent, although I'd phrase it differently: developers need to realize that they need to do true urban projects and be willing to listen to the residents, or they will face a firestorm of difficulty and criticism.
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I remember The Arizona Republic's first (and only) architecture critic, Reed Kroloff (also an associate dean of the ASU architecture school). He's been getting a great deal of national attention as Tulane's architecture department dean in the wake of Katrina.
In the early 90s, he called the newly built Dial building (now the Viad) a "deodorant bar to the Gods". Armand Ervanian, Dial vp was irate and demanded his firing. The Republic held for a while but asked him to temper his critiques. Kroloff left not to long afterwards to edit the magazine Architecture.
This points out the problem with a city where there's too little confidence in itself. If we celebrate everything that gets built it's inevitable the quality will suffer. There will be a tendency to muffle differences in pursuit of fake comity. Great cities welcome people like Kroloff or Philadelphia's Inga Saffron. Mediocre cities will tend to confuse building height with vibrancy. That's why Phoenix gets a goober like Doug MacEachern passing judgment on its nascent urbanism. Clearly, he hasn't a clue what he's talking about, but he'll be given a big megaphone to amplify his ignorance.
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