Odds and ends:
New Residents. Central Phoenix's population will swell a little bit more as closings just occurred in the second building in Tapestry on Central (the portion of the complex facing Central). Meanwhile, closing is supposed to take place in mid-July in the first phase of Portland Place.
Sun Mercantile/W Hotel suit. The lawsuit filed by various groups in an effort to save the Sun Mercantile building is now rolling into its fourteenth month of existence, and still going strong. The case is now in the discovery phase. I'll say it again: developers, do quality urban projects and respect the buildings and parks that are already in place, or you will face some powerful resistance. (See 44 Monroe as an example of doing it right.)
Light rail as economic development tool. Even light rail advocates like myself will admit the project is partly about economic development. Read a libertarian response (starting on page 4).
Fellow bloggers. After perusing the sites of various downtown Phoenix-related bloggers, I have to wonder: am I the only one who's not a real estate agent?
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4 comments:
I hate to say this, but the Tapestry design leaves much to be desired. There are a half dozen of so retail spaces on the Central side and two of them have huge ventilation machines in front of their windows. There are also a few utility boxes scattered here and there. The lobby spaces are horrifying. And the building's fit and finish are, at best, mediocre.
Light rail should be an economic tool (btw: the link doesn't go anywhere). After all, freeways are, even when they're built to relieve current congestion. The argument against light rail by libertarians seems a little tetchy. It's as if only autocentric development "pays for itself" while transit is a boondoggle by elitists to increase downtown property values. That argument rests on the notion that any deviation from their lowest-common-denominator growth paradigm violates some core market principle.
I disdain libertarian ideology for many reasons, but their emphasis on suburban sprawl as the ONLY rational course of growth really angers me. Of course, it limiting the choices of citizens is your aim, then you'll want to push freeways and starve mass transit. But theirs is essentially a circular argument since they're letting the dominant actor get all the lines. Of course the other actors don't register. It's how they wrote the play. Libertarians are all about choice except when it comes to transportation and the urban form.
I know a few of the downtown bloggers and I'm impressed by their knowledge even though they're approaching the subject as an economic interest. There are also a few bloggers over at AZCentral.com who write about downtown - Jim McPherson, Kimber Lanning, Dan Erquiaga - who bring some more disinterested viewpoints to bear. This blog is the best because it isn't tainted by cheerleading and wishful thinking. Downtown Phoenix is a very difficult project and it's necessary to keep this in mind when others are all agog from some latest high-rise proposal. Phoenix needs its believers but it also needs tough love and perspective.
Re Tapestry: I like it for the sheer fact that it will bring a lot of new residents to central Phoenix. But it does have a lot of drawbacks, as the market is pointing out (have you seen the resale prices dropping like stones?)
Re the libertarians: Check out the link. It's always interesting to see what the other side has to say. Even an anti-light rail article has to admit there's no unanimity in the belief that light rail's costs outweigh its benefits.
Re the other bloggers: Great point, I left out Jim McPherson's great blog at azcentral.com. In fact, all the azcentral.com blogs are a worthwhile read-- even Chuck Coughlin's (although his is only interesting because of the comments).
Seems to me that a few of you may be misunderstanding what a libertarian is. The article was simply making the point that government built light rail has more costs than benefits, just like most government projects. The latter half of that sentence is the key.
Libertarians don't prefer suburban, highway driven growth over urban growth. They don't want lots of stucco suburbs and no urban core. In fact, a true libertarian (from a political standpoint) doesn't care one way or the other. They allow the market to work and then choice flourishes.
Its silly to say "Libertarians hate rail, but love highways"- no, when built by the government, libertarians hate both.
I'm both a libertarian, and a resident of downtown Phoenix- so if you have any other questions you need cleared up, I'd be happy to answer them.
William, thanks for your post. I'm not trying to imply that libertarians are necessarily pro-sprawl, but that they are anti-light rail. It's easy to confuse the anti-urbanists with libertarians, however, because they employ a libertarian argument in advocating the rise of suburbia: e.g., "the market has dictated that the suburban form is preferable-- look at Phoenix where people have 'voted with their feet.'" (This argument conveniently ignores the billions in government dollars spent on sprawl-enabling projects such as freeways.)
However, it does seem to me that libertarian thinkers seem to attack projects like light rail systems with a ferocity that they don't display with regard to developments such as federal highway projects. Perhaps they assume highways are too embedded in our culture to have any chance of realistically stopping them. If you have examples of libertarians questioning the billions spent on freeway projects, please feel free to post the links.
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