Get past downtown?

The expected backlash is on-- today's Arizona Republic published a story claiming that Phoenix voters have tired of the mayor and council's downtown focus and want the attention of the next mayor on their various outlying neighborhoods.

At first blush, that seems like a bad thing for downtown. But the more I reflect on the article, I think it may not be so bad if city hall leaves central Phoenix alone for a few years or more. The downtown focus of the past decade wasn't necessarily a plus-- the outcome of the Gordon era was another suburban-type megablock shopping center in CityScape, continued teardowns of historic properties at Madison Square Garden and the City Hall-backed gutting of the Sun Mercantile Building (shelved when the economy tanked), and virtually nothing done about the dirt lots that are everywhere around downtown.

If that was what a downtown focus got us, I'm all for City Hall paying attention to other parts of Phoenix. In fact, I'm OK with a decade where Phoenix leadership does only two things for downtown: (1) cut red tape for businesses that want to open downtown and (2) improve neighborhood infrastructure by narrowing sidewalks, eliminating some of the one-way streets in and around downtown, adding streetlights and perhaps plunging the power lines along Roosevelt Street underground.

Let's let other parts of Phoenix 'benefit' from City Hall's attention.