Laying the foundation

During these recession/depressionary times, not much building will occur. So it's nice to see the infrastructure set in place for the next wave of development, whenever that occurs. Here are two examples.

First, the city completed streetscape improvements on Second Avenue from Fillmore Street all the way up to Roosevelt. Shade trees, palm trees and grassy lawns were added, decorative 'acorn' lamps were installed, and, perhaps most importantly, the sidewalk was widened. Future developments on both sides of the street will benefit, as will anyone walking from the Roosevelt and Third Avenue area all the way to the core of downtown.



Second, APS added a downtown substation at Seventh and Garfield Streets to serve the larger numbers of residents and businesses in the area. That by itself is decent news, but then APS made a maneuver so creative that it's hard to believe it occurred in Phoenix: it decorated the exterior of the substation so that it looks very similar to the neighboring Artisan Village condos. As you can see in the picture above, the facade mimicked the Artisan Village look right down to the balconies!

The bottom line: if big bureaucracies like APS and the City of Phoenix can take creatives steps like these, there's hope for the city after all.

The plague of downtown Phoenix continues

Before I moved back to Phoenix, I would drive around downtown and wonder why it looked the way it did with so many empty lots. Other cities with somewhat desolate downtowns usually just have a lot of empty buildings. But Phoenix is peculiar with its abundance of barren land right in the middle of its downtown.

Now I don't wonder where the vacant lots come from; I've come back and watched some of the lots appear. And just this week a new one popped up as a landowner decimated an entire block of vacant buildings at First Street and Portland, as pictured above. While I don't believe any of the buildings were necessarily "historic," they were somewhat old and could have been excellent homes to small businesses as downtown continued to rebound. But now they're gone, and in their place is just more infertile land, zoned for a high rise that may never be built.

Downtown links

There's good news for downtown Phoenix as 2009 gets underway, as light rail is meeting ridership expectations so far, even before ASU, Brophy, and Central High School students return to class. In addition, despite the gloomy economic times, downtown keeps adding more entertainment options as the Irish pub called the Turf Accountant gets ready to open its doors later this month. I also understand that Club Central, the midtown hip hop spot, is opening a branch at Second Avenue and Van Buren.

On the down side: the Boston Globe (at the very end of this story) speculates that sprawled-out cities like Phoenix have less potential then dense, urban places like London or Cambridge to develop intellectual breakthroughs, or even worse, pessimistic blogger Jon Talton calls Phoenix a "dead town walking" in the midst of the recession and housing market collapse.