Saying the right things but doing the wrong things at CityScape

With CityScape's grand opening looming, the Republic ran a story featuring this amazing quote from RED Development's Jeff Moloznik:

"I think what separates CityScape from Arizona Center is that when you do
take the wrapping paper off and our tenants are open, people will really see an
engaged street front," Moloznik said. "If you want to have retail on this site,
it has to be facing the street."

With all due respect, what in the world is he talking about? Anyone with two eyes can see that CityScape mostly turns its back to the street. In that regard, at best the development is a marginal improvement on the Arizona Center.

Working counter-clockwise from the west side of CityScape's primary retail block at Central Avenue and Washington Street, the west side features an entry to the parking garage, a teeny little auxiliary door for Five Guys, and a back door for CVS at the southwest corner.

The south side is more of the same-- from west to east you have the CVS back door, a blank wall with some measly posters and windows, another parking garage entrance, and on the east side an entry for Oakville Grocery.

The east side is open as you look across the concrete jungle that a very few people still call "Patriot's Park" to the true front doors of CVS and Lucky Strike (recessed far away from the street in true suburban fashion).

And the north side features a secondary building that has no entrances facing the street.

I'm sorry, but a couple token windows and back doors do not "engage" the street. A walk down the street of virtually any major urban center in the world would illustrate the difference. Either RED is being disingenuous or, more likely, this is more proof that they're suburban developers that simply didn't have a clue about building an urban structure.

Where was my byline?

Maybe I'm seeing something that wasn't there, but the opening paragraphs of the Arizona Republic's cover story on downtown sounded a lot like something I wrote about six weeks ago. Here's what I mean:

On February 25, in my post 'The Old Guard Reacts in the Wake of CityScape,' I wrote, '...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...CityScape is just the latest variation in a series of megaprojects billed as the downtown savior.'

On April 8, the Republic ran a story called 'Multiple projects key to downtown's revival.' It opens like this: 'First it was the Phoenix Civic Plaza. Then it was the Arizona Center. Later it was the sporting venues - America West Arena and Bank One Ballpark - that were to provide the spark. More recently, it was a new Arizona State University campus that was ballyhooed. It seems every few years - for the past three or four decades - city boosters anointed one venture or another as the savior of downtown Phoenix. But each time, the project's actual impact has fallen far short of the lofty projections.'

Maybe I'm mistaken-- but it seems like there are a lot of similarities here-- the use of a list that names the civic plaza, the Arizona Center, the arena and ballpark; the use of the same word, "savior," to describe the projects; and of course the overall thesis are pretty much the same.

Anyway, I'm not mad. The notion that downtown Phoenix tries to reinvent itself every so often through some "silver bullet" megaproject was hardly novel when I wrote it. And I also know that someone can read something, forget it, and then weeks or months later, the subject of the reading comes back into one's mind and the person innocently uses it as their own thoughts. My only beef is, hey, if you liked the concept, give me a byline, or quote me!