Flashy signs are great, but let's not get carried away

The recent announcement that 50-foot electronic billboards will soon loom over the southern portion of downtown Phoenix is fine, but a couple boosters went way overboard in their praise of the move.

"The point is...to really put some excitement on Jefferson Street," claimed Judd Norris, the guy who's going to head up the billboard district.

Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos went him one better.

"It's going to activate downtown. That was one of the best ideas I had all year."

I don't have a problem with the signs, at least conceptually. But these guys are wildly delusional that a few bright signs are going to liven up Jefferson, let alone rejuvenate downtown. You need housing, restaurants, shops and offices to do that. It helps if they face the street, too. Too bad the city helped kill part of Jefferson when they approved the inward-facing CityScape project, which turns the back end of CVS and Oakville Grocery to Jefferson between Central and First Street.

Bandwagon City

I've complained about it before, but nothing illustrates Phoenix's shortcomings the way its sports fan base can. The latest example of what has been a decades-long issue in town played out during the last three nights when the New York Yankees came to town to take on the Diamondbacks, as Chase Field had to have been two-thirds to three-quarters Yankees partisans. You'd never see an embarassing display like that in places like Boston, Chicago, or even Los Angeles.

It's often argued that fandom in a local sports team is an expression of civic pride. If that's the case, what does it mean when the locals turn out solely to root against the home team?

All quiet

One of the x-factors for downtown is the performance of its two main sports teams, the Diamondbacks and Suns. When the teams are playing well, attendance at their respective events surges and downtown becomes that much more alive. (Granted, the two stadiums do a lousy job of interacting with the rest of downtown, but while the spillover from downtown sporting events could be better, there is no doubt that the streets are more alive and downtown businesses profit. Hopefully the presence of light rail will enhance the sports spillover even further.)

But as of late April 2009, things are pretty quiet on the downtown sports scene. The Suns missed the playoffs for the first time since 2004, costing downtown establishments as much as $200,000 per game in lost revenue, and the Diamondbacks are off to a bad start with their punchless offense.

The prognosis for the two teams seem very different: the aging Suns ought to tear up the team while there is still some trade value in their older players— hanging on to some of the younger guys who hustle on defense as well as offense such as Jared Dudley (above)— while the Diamondbacks have to be patient with a team that’s still very young and wait for the talent that showed itself in 2006 to return.

Here’s hoping that the two teams can turn things around quickly. It’s great for all of Phoenix and especially downtown when the Suns and D-backs are title contenders as they both were just a couple years ago. And I shudder to think how far we’ve fallen if our best hope for a championship in Phoenix is…the Cardinals?

Random Thoughts

* Stock Footage. I loved seeing the downtown Phoenix shots on ABC today during the Suns game, but is it too much to ask for these guys to get some current footage? The downtown shot during today's game showed an unfinished Summit in the foreground and a half-built 44 Monroe in the distance. The downtown shot during a recent Diamondbacks game on Fox Sports Arizona recently panned over downtown at night-- but 44 Monroe hadn't even been built yet-- meaning the shot was at least two years old. Hey, downtown Phoenix can use the publicity, but let's get some current footage so everyone can see all the new projects.

* New Diamondback attitude. Speaking of the Diamondbacks, I heard Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall on KTAR's morning show this week-- he joked that he wanted to have a contest to send a fan of an opposing team to Cincinnati (in his mind, a lousy city). I love that kind of attitude. I have attended tons of Cardinals games over the years that were filled with fans of the other team, and I've always had the belief that the Bidwell family didn't mind that, believing a customer is a customer. It's great to see the Diamondbacks take the opposite approach. One more reason why I had no problem watching the Cardinals move out to Glendale.

* Dead Real Estate Market. While the foreclosure rate in central Phoenix is low relative to the rest of the metro area, home sales in downtown Phoenix are nonexistent. There have been seven - seven! - sales in the 85003 zip code during the first quarter of 2008.

Fenway West

Wanna-be New Englanders celebrate at Chase Field after Red Sox player Julio Lugo's first inning home run. By the way, my guess is 1/3 of the people cheering on the Sox in Phoenix yesterday are bandwagoners that have never set foot in Massachusetts.

Photo Credit: David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic.

Sports teams are sources of civic pride and help foster a sense of community. People's love for their cities is often reflected in their love of the local sports team-- look at Chicago with the Cubs or D.C. with the Redskins, for instance.

That's why it bugs me to attend sporting events in Phoenix. Fans of the home team in every sport are sometimes outnumbered and frequently outshouted by fans of the opposing teams. And, for the most part, the people cheering for the visiting teams are residents of the Phoenix area.

The scene was no different yesterday at Chase Field, where in my estimation at least half of the 40,000 fans on hand were there to cheer on the Boston Red Sox against the Diamondbacks. To me, this just shows that many of the people who move here never really see Phoenix as "home," and that their loyalties continue to lie elsewhere even when they moved here to escape some frigid place back east.

Having half the (local) fans cheering against the home team would be unthinkable in places like Chicago, D.C., New York, and of course Boston. Maybe someday I'll get to see the same thing happen here. In the meantime, go Diamondbacks (and Sun Devils, Suns, Coyotes, Sting, and yeah I guess even the Cardinals).