Rogue Columnist

Big Town

Big Town was a brand of melons and vegetables shipped by MBM Farms and Zeitman Produce from the Salt River Valley in its days as American Eden. One of scores of colorful labels on wooden crates, it had a stylized version of the Phoenix skyline in the background.

But I can't help wondering if it also caught a bit of the moment in 1950, when Phoenix entered the ranks of America's 100 largest cities. It was No. 99, with 106,818 people in 17 square miles. Phoenix landed 62 people ahead of No. 100 Allentown, Pa. But it was behind Scranton, Wichita, Tulsa, Dayton — not to mention its Southwest rival El Paso, No. 76.

In 1950, the nation's fifth most populous city was Detroit. According to new Census data, Phoenix has once again surpassed Philadelphia to claim the No. 5 spot it had by estimates in 2006 but lost in the 2010 count. I'll have more to write about this later.

For now, I want to linger on that moment when the Census Bureau made it official: Phoenix had crossed 100,000. The big town was definitely a city now, if not a big one (Even now, Phoenix has many characteristics of a small town, especially in power and power relationships).

As you can tell from the geographic size of the city, this Phoenix was convenient and walkable, with a true urban fabric. At 6,714 people per square mile, it was much more dense than today's 2,798. Surrounding it were citrus groves, farms, and small towns mostly dependent on agriculture (Tempe 7,684, Mesa, 16,790, Glendale 8,179, Gilbert 1,114, Scottsdale 2,032, and Buckeye 1,932). Arizona's total population was 756,000. Phoenix boasted an abundant shade canopy from the narrow streets to the enchanting canal banks. Downtown was the busiest central business district between El Paso and Los Angeles. As many as 10 passenger trains served Union Station in the golden age of streamliners.

Great expectations

The local media have paid much attention to a nascent technology cluster in downtown Phoenix. Most recently came an Arizona Republic story headlined, "What's Driving a Downtown Phoenix Tech Boom." It reads in part:

A San Francisco tech company that announced an expansion from Silicon Valley to downtown Phoenix last week cited a lively business climate and a light-rail stop as primary factors in choosing the city.

Representatives of a semiconductor packaging company moving its corporate headquarters in May from California to south of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport said the city is cost-effective and has the workforce they need. These recent examples are part of what Phoenix leaders say is a flood of tech industry leaders and startups looking to open in the city. Mayor Greg Stanton highlighted the growth in his State of the City speech on April 25.

Stanton said the number of tech companies downtown has nearly quadrupled in the past five years. He credited adaptive reuse projects in the Warehouse District and new tech hubs as a source of the success.

Good for Phoenix. I hate to be the one who suns on the parade, but a reality check is necessary. For one thing, the top of the story lacks that basic of journalism, "How big is big"? As in, a quadrupling of companies from a baseline of one leaves us with not too many firms. Also, what is "tech"? When metropolitan Phoenix gets credit for technology jobs, they usually turn out to be call centers or back-office operations. Most pay poorly. By contrast, Seattle's tech jobs are actually undercounted because the tens of thousands of well-paid Amazon headquarters positions are classified under retail by statisticians.

Phoenix 101: streetcars

Moses Hazeltine Sherman was a teacher from Vermont who made his way to Arizona Territory in 1874. While teaching, he also made money in land and mining. Later, he would move to Los Angeles and become a millionaire. But before that, he and M.E. Collins founded the Phoenix Street Railway in 1887.

Originally the streetcars were pulled by mules. But electric cars took over in 1893. The new Territorial capital had a little more than 3,000 people. By 1925, the system boasted nearly 34 miles of track on six lines. It had two major spines. One ran west to the Capitol and on to 22nd Avenue, and east to the State Hospital along Washington Street. The other operated north and south from downtown to the Phoenix Indian School.

A long addition ran east from the Indian School to 12th Street, then cut north and west, eventually terminating in Glendale. Other routes went to the Fairgrounds; north through the new Kenilworth district to Encanto Boulevard, and over to the east side ending at 10th Street and Sheridan. Most of the streetcar lines ran down the middle of the streets.

Through the middle of the 20th century, most American cities and large towns had extensive streetcar networks. Numerous electrified interurban railways were also build, competing with the steam railroads of the time. They carried freight in addition to passengers on larger cars. The largest system was in Los Angeles, the Pacific Electric, known for its iconic red cars. Owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, it operated more than a thousand miles of track in the LA basin.

Innovation district

The City of Phoenix has smartly engaged Mary Jo Waits to help craft an innovation district plan for downtown. For newcomers, Waits was the driving force behind the Morrison Institute's most consequential reports in the late 1990s and 2000s, especially 2001's Five Shoes Waiting to Drop. It was prophetic. So was her warning that Arizona would become the "Appalachia of the 21st century" if it didn't change course. I collaborated with her in the "meds and eds" strategy to build off TGen, and later did some work for her when she was at the Pew Center on the States. The city could not have chosen a better, more knowledgeable and visionary person.

She asked me to write a case study on the innovation district in South Lake Union, adjacent to downtown Seattle. So this is what follows, with some parting observations for Phoenix.

When I first started coming to Seattle in the early 1990s, the South Lake Union neighborhood was a run-down collection of low-rise commercial buildings and the remnants of industrial structures from when it was laced with railroad tracks. This was once a gritty maritime district — logging, ship repair, canneries — around the south edge of the lake, which was connected to Puget Sound by the ship canal.

Aside from having the headquarters of the Seattle Times, SLU as it became known, had little to recommend it. The area had been wounded in the 1960s when Interstate 5 was rammed through, tearing it apart from Capitol Hill. And blocks of car dealerships, parking lots, and the occasional seedy bar separated it from the downtown core.

In the early 1990s, Seattle Times columnist John Hinterberger suggested turning part of SLU into a large central park, something the city's core lacked since voters had rejected a visionary 1911 civic plan. The 60-acre "civic lawn" would be framed by high-tech companies, condos, and restaurants. The Seattle Commons attracted widespread business support, including from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who was accumulating property there. But the famous "Seattle Process" intervened. Many feared it was a giveaway to Allen. Voters rejected the Commons in 1995 and 1996.

Phoenix 101: the twenties

If this photo shows a busy little city from the Roaring Twenties, that's exactly what you found in Phoenix during this transformative decade. Town to city, horses to cars, less Wild West and more sophistication — Phoenix had been moving this way for years. But in the 1920s, they became solidly entrenched — even Town Ditch was covered. The first "skyscraper," the seven-story Heard Building, right, opened in 1920. By the end of the decade, it had several taller and more impressive siblings that remain some of the city's most treasured and beautiful buildings. Central Methodist Church (ME South) on the near right would move to a handsome new structure at Central and Pierce.

The nation entered the decade with Woodrow Wilson as president. But he was incapacitated by a stroke and his wife, Edith, was protecting him from most visitors and essentially carrying out most of his executive duties. America was disillusioned by the outcome of the Great War, the Palmer Raids and the "Red Scare," what was seen as Wilson's overreaching, and two decades of the Progressive Era. Voters (including women, for the first time) eagerly embraced Ohio's Warren G. Harding as the next president. He promised a "return to normalcy," forever wrecking the correct word "normality." Harding freed the Socialist Eugene Debs, who Wilson had imprisoned for opposing American involvement in the war.

The Great War had brought changes to the Salt River Valley, especially with the booming demand for cotton. By 1920, it had turned into a bust and Phoenix was suffering through the national recession. Things would soon turn around as the economy expanded and America embarked on, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, "the greatest, gaudiest spree in history." It was the Jazz Age, with the experiment of Prohibition sidestepped with speakeasies. Prohibition was hardly observed at all in the non-Mormon towns of the West. In Phoenix, bars, borthels, and gambling dens operated in the open, sometimes making payoffs to the city. This wide-open environment soon attracted the Mafia, including Al Capone.

The Phoenix of the 1920s was expanding out of the half-mile footprint of the original township. In the previous decade, the city had surpassed Tucson to become the most populous place in Arizona. With more than 29,000 people in 1920, Phoenix would grow nearly 66 percent over the next 10 years. Residential neighborhoods expanded a half mile north of McDowell, west of the Santa Fe tracks at 19th Avenue, and east as far as 16th Street. These were gradually incorporated into the city limits, which expanded from five square miles in 1920 to 6.5 square miles a decade later.

The mansions of "Millionaire's Row" still graced Monroe Street, but the central business district was moving north. Elegant bungalows lined the streets north of Van Buren into the fancy new Kenilworth District north of Roosevelt Street and eventually the Period Revival neighborhoods just beyond McDowell, including Palmcroft. Many of these were reachable by the streetcars.

Silicon Valley in Phoenix?

Earlier this month, the New York Times published a story, most of which could have been written by the chamber of commerce, under the headline, "Bay Area Start-Ups Find Low-Cost Outposts in Arizona."

It rubbed me the wrong way from the start, because the story is not about Show Low or Why, Kingman, or even Tucson, but metropolitan Phoenix. I will never understand why one of the most magical city names in America is banished for the amorphous and sometimes inaccurate "Arizona." Anyway, riding with that burr under my saddle, I tried to approach the article with an open mind.

Unfortunately, it had all of the weaknesses of "parachute journalism." The writer, based in the Bay Area, parachutes into a little-known burg with an angle, assembles a few anecdotes, talks to a local economic development expert, adds some data from Moody's, widens the lens a bit to make the story about a broader trend, and presto! This is not easy stuff, particularly if you're not armed with history and skepticism. The only good parachute journalist I ever personally knew was Leah Beth Ward, my colleague from the Cincinnati Enquirer and Charlotte Observer.

It's not that I don't want success for Phoenix. Far from it. I was the Arizona Republic columnist who wiped out forests and digital space writing about Michael Crow and ASU, Jeff Trent and T-Gen, and Bill Harris and Science Foundation Arizona, the efforts to elevate the economy under Gov. Janet Napolitano and Phoenix Mayors Skip Rimsza, Phil Gordon, and Greg Stanton. I rarely felt that the brightsiders had my back. It is about time to see some payoff.

The story had none of this context and lacked much more. The reporter did not even avail himself of the readily available journalism about Arizona's crippling problems. Which is too bad for those of us who want to know the real score. So Homey did some digging.

Phoenix 101: the eighties

Wrigley Mansion looking southwest over the city in the 1980s.

On the night in 1968 after President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill authorizing construction of the Central Arizona Project., my mother took me on a long drive. We went through the citrus groves, the empty farmlands between the towns, the enchanting oasis that was Phoenix. Like many who had dedicated a good part of their lives to win the CAP, she had deep misgivings. She wanted me to see the place, burn it in my brain, and remember. "It will be gone," she said. She didn't live to see her prediction come true. But the ferocious transformation of Phoenix from my beloved old city to the nearly unrecognizable concrete desert of today largely  happened during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The big changes began in the 1980s.

In 1980, Phoenix's population was nearly 790,000, up 36 percent from 1970. The city would grow slower in the 1980s — up 25 percent. But Maricopa County grew almost 41 percent. Yesterday's small communities began to become today's mega-suburbs as sprawl took off as never before. For example, Glendale, which had grown by 168 percent in the 1970s, added another 52 percent in the eighties. It would hold nearly 148,000 people by 1990. Arrowhead Ranch, the citrus groves owned by the Goldwater and Martori families, was being developed into subdivisions, one of the largest new "master planned communities" in the state. Phoenix remained the power center of the state and county through the decade, but its hold began to slip.

In 1980, Phoenix still enjoyed a robust base of major headquarters. By most measures it was never stronger and almost all were located in the Central Corridor. Among them were the three big banks, Valley National, First National, and the Arizona Bank; Greyhound; Arizona Public Service; American Fence; Central Newspapers; Western Savings, and Del Webb Co. Karl Eller's Combined Communications had been purchased by Gannett in 1978 but Eller remained active, taking control of Circle K in 1983 and making it the nation's second-largest convenience store chain.

APS formed a holding company, Pinnacle West Capital, that was not regulated like the utility by the Corporation Commission. Among its ventures was the S&L Merabank. Taking advantage of airline deregulation, America West Airlines was formed by local investors in 1983 — it would go on to merge with USAirways and take over American Airlines. And Phelps-Dodge, which for a century controlled much of Arizona's destiny as the world's leading copper company, moved its headquarters from New York City to a new tower in Midtown Phoenix.

Dog days of summer

After three weeks of commenting on national politics, it's time to return to Phoenix. This was once the time of year to stay inside with the air conditioning and wait for the oven to ease up in September. Now it's snake removal calls in north Scottsdale, idiots hiking in the middle of the day and often putting first responders at risk to rescue them, and an oven that doesn't shut off until close to Thanksgiving. But..."everything's fine!," with championship golf!

• Phoenix rejected a tax break for a developer that partially demolished the historic Circles Records building under the pretext of erecting a 19-story residential tower. The Resistance, which was sandbagged by the tear-down, reacted by a range of "Hell, no!" to quiet negotiations with crisis-management duo Jordan and Jason Rose, brought in to salvage the deal.

Unfortunately, I fear the result will be complete demolition and another surface parking lot to the flipped and reflipped until the day, decades hence, when the property ends up on the books of a REIT in Tel Aviv. It's unclear that the developer ever really had the capitalization to do the mid-rise, and lack of tax incentives makes it even more unlikely. State law gives enormous protection to property owners. So defeating the tax break doesn't mean saving what's left of the former Stewart Motors at McKinley and Central (technically just north of downtown).

It can't be said enough: Downtown Phoenix needs more than ASU, government, and a few modest headquarters. It needs a robust and diverse economy — very much at odds with the spec sprawl model at work elsewhere in "the Valley." Until then, Phoenix will be the only major city in the nation missing out on the "back to downtown" phenomenon you can read about here. It is an astonishing, heartbreaking failure, and saying that downtown Phoenix is better than 20 years ago doesn't cut it.

Light rail to Union Station

"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."

The South Central line is one of the most promising additions to the Phoenix light-rail system (WBIYB). City Council has approved a plan to fast-track the five-mile extension to Baseline Road by 2023. But a crucial piece of the project isn't on the table, and as far as I know nobody is discussing it.

This line needs a slight rerouting: It needs to jog over the Third Avenue on Washington, then run south to Lincoln Street before moving back to Central for the journey south. This would provide two big benefits, one immediate and the other long term.

By shifting west, it would pick up large numbers of riders at the government centers of the city and county. But the big enchilada is that the line would pass just to the east of Union Station, which was Phoenix's intercity passenger rail depot until the 1990s.

Light rail might need a tunnel under the current Union Pacific line, but it would be worth it. The payoff would be connecting light rail with a reborn Union Station as the hub for a region-wide commuter train system as well as the return of Amtrak to Tucson and Los Angeles.

If Phoenix fails to do this, it will be a blunder to be regretted for decades to come.

Jane Jacobs is dead. Long live Jane Jacobs.

May 4th marked the centennial of the birth of seminal urbanist Jane Jacobs. It has been marked by numerous articles. Some of the better ones are here, here,  here, and, for a contemporary piece of revisionist iconoclasm, here. The latter aside, Jacobs remains an important figure, perhaps the most influential voice, in explaining the value of cities, how they really worked, and the damage of the planning elite. She begins her most famous work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, bluntly: "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding."

Written in 1961, the book was the first major refutation of the ideas that had brought urban renewal, dead housing projects, dull suburbia. Her great nemesis was Robert Moses, the powerful city planner and master builder of mid-century New York City. His hubris and the damage he did to New York are masterfully plumbed in Robert Caro's The Power Broker. Entire neighborhoods were bulldozed to make way for his freeways and his influence spread nationwide. She led the crusade that stopped Moses' Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have gutted Geenwich Village, SoHo, and Little Italy. At one point in the battle, she was accused of inciting a riot (talk about the Resistance).

Jacobs was not an ideologue. To her, ideology was poison, offering "pre-fabricated answers" that adherents always fall back on. Instead, she was an observer of cities, a chronicler of what worked and what didn't.

Not once is Phoenix mentioned in Jacobs' first book, even though it was a big city by 1961. Still, I suspect she would have found much to like in the old Phoenix, where there was a "ballet of the streets" downtown and much of the city was focused on use by people instead of automobiles. This was before the freeways, before the teardowns. If she were alive today (she died in 2006), Phoenix would represent every horror she could imaging befalling a city. The Papago Freeway inner loop is classic Robert Moses vandalism. Her critique would include a lack of safety, for she documented how much more crime occurred in "thinned out" Los Angeles than in dense New York.

Next on the chopping block: Macayo's Central

With Circles partially demolished and tagged and being held hostage by the developer comes news of another Central Avenue icon facing the bulldozer. 

The Macayo's restaurant that has stood for decades at Central and Indianola is facing demolition. In its place would be some 225 "residential units" in 65-foot building (this being Phoenix, of course, that is a big maybe). The developer is requesting a zoning change to "walkable urban."

One astounding thing is that "walkable urban" would require "only" 256 parking spaces (!). But the developer wants 369. "Free" parking is never free and Phoenix has way too much of it. Real urbanism would take down the number of spaces substantially. But, hey, WBIYB and the project (if it really happens) would be on light rail.

The really good news is that Macayo's intends to move to the south and stay in business.

The Circles jerks

Stewart Motor Co., the Studebaker dealership, in the 1950s.

I knew they would do it, only when and whom the "they" would be. After Circles Records closed in 2010, I worried every time I passed the empty building. The only surprise was the speed with which much of the cherished former Stewart Motor/Circles Records, built in 1947, was demolished.

Aspirant Development, a unit of Scottsdale-based Empire Group, says it wants to build apartments on the site at Central and McKinley. It bought the parcel for $2.65 million. The company had even scheduled a meeting with the Roosevelt Action Association neighborhood groups on the Monday when...ooops!...two-thirds (or less) of the streamline moderne structure was torn down.

In a way, it's a salutary development that there was enough outrage to stop the tear-down and cause Aspirant to hire the ubiquitous Jason and Jordan Rose to handle damage control. Mayor Greg Stanton had this to say on Facebook:

I am angry that in the middle of negotiating a plan to save the iconic Stewart Motor Company building, the developer began demolition. After my office participated in discussions between the developer and neighborhood leaders, I was confident that a resolution would be found. However, sadly, it appears that the developer was acting in bad faith.

BACKGROUND:

The City’s Community and Economic Development Department was in the middle of discussions with the developer, Empire Group. Some of the agreed terms of the discussion stated that the developer would not demolish or remove any portion of the existing building on the Site prior to submitting for construction permits. Empire has plans to build a 19-story apartment building on the 1.24-acre site.

If only such consciousness had been around when hundreds of irreplaceable buildings were bulldozed in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet even now, the unofficial Preservation Police can't be everywhere at once, particularly when so much of the deck is stacked against them.

The developer even apologized. But here's the rub: Aspirant appears to be holding the remains — basically the facade — hostage in order to secure a tax break from the city. Something like a 25-year moratorium on property taxes. In exchange, it would build the 19-story apartment tower with pieces of the old building incorporated into a boring new glass lookalike design. After the developer's behavior, this will be a tough sell to Council.

Stanton's dilemma

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton gave a fine State of the City speech this week (you can watch it here). One could quibble with his "Not even a decade after the Great Recession shook us to our knees, Phoenix has emerged stronger and more resilient than ever before with an economy that is breaking free from the chains of the boom-then-bust cycle." Phoenix has far under-performed its peer cities in this recovery. But Stanton is an upbeat guy and Phoenicians have a hard time with reality.

He deserves credit for the courage to call out the Kookocracy's war on cities.

Now, the hard stuff. Outside the prepared remarks, the mayor supports building a new arena to be shared by the Suns and Coyotes, with at least some taxpayer money involved. The Arizona Republic reported, "Phoenix already has a permanent tourism tax on hotel and motel stays and car rentals. It is in the process of selling the city-owned Sheraton hotel and the Translational Genomics Research Institute building downtown, projects supported by the tourism tax. By getting those buildings off its books, the city could potentially free up revenue to help pay for a new stadium."

Not surprisingly, this produced its share of criticism. For example, E.J. Montini columnized about rich team owners asking for welfare:

So, politely as possible, I would suggest that all of us collectively send a little note to these guys:

"Dear Suns, Coyotes (and Diamondbacks),

"Build your own damn sports complex.

"Respectfully,

"Phoenix."

Snakebit

As with the Suns arena, the Diamondbacks stadium never would have been built downtown if it weren't for the unfairly reviled Jerry Colangelo. He was the last remaining civic steward who could knock heads and write checks in the tradition of the Phoenix 40.

Other sites were proposed, including on the Glendale fringe and at 40th Street and the Red Mountain Freeway. But Colangelo saw both venues as essential to the revival of the heart of the city. It was telling that with all the old headquarters gone or going, a sports executive was the last man standing. But it was enough and both facilities played pivotal roles in saving downtown.

BOB/Chase Field is not a handsome stadium, looking more like an airplane hanger than Camden Yards, Safeco Field, or Coors Field. It led to the demolition of numerous historic structures in the Warehouse District and Chinatown, including the Arizona Citrus Growers Coop building. On the other hand, a successful archeological dig was undertaken there. And the finished product is convenient to the entire region and located on light rail (WBIYB). Significantly, its air conditioning proved that Major League baseball could succeed in Phoenix.

Now, under Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick, the Diamondbacks are demanding that the county provide $187 million in upgrades — "current and future maintenance obligations" — or the team will seek a way out of its lease and leave.

I have long suspected that Kendrick, and his Suns counterpart Robert Sarver, have longed to depart downtown for the suburbs. Neither has a deep affinity to Phoenix or commitment to the health of downtown. Kendrick was already behind the lavish Spring Training facilities on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community close to north Scottsdale. His wife, Randy, is a major right-wing money figure and both give to Koch causes and the "Goldwater" Institute — stances guaranteed to be anti-city.

Phoenix 101: Before superblocks

"Superblocks," with one project, be it an office, apartment, or parking garage, taking up an entire block, are one of the biggest enemies of a vibrant downtown. Think of old Civic Plaza (right) or the Chase Tower and its parking hulk. Even CityScape, which has many shops, offices, and restaurants (unfortunately facing inward), consists of superblocks that once held dozens of individual buildings, each with distinctive architecture and attitude to the street.

This is not a problem confined to central Phoenix — superblocks are profitable for developers. But this is a Phoenix-centric blog and no other major city lost more of its good urban bones to teardowns and, in many cases after decades, rebuilding into massive projects that are nearly dead at street level.

It's important to recall what Phoenix had. Not for nostalgia, but for lessons in how good cities really work (which is usually the opposite of what urban planners want) and because so few Phoenicians even know what once existed.

So thanks to the new digital archive of the McCulloch Brothers collection at ASU and other shots archived by Brad Hall, let's examine the energetic, walkable, full-of-life-and-commerce Phoenix:

Punked again?

I was going to write about [the real-estate developer], but that can wait until next week.

Here on the ground in Phoenix, there are new apartments but mostly rumors of new apartments.

For example, the property on the southwest corner of First Avenue and Roosevelt across from Trinity Cathedral is a dark hulk. Two five-story stairway shafts and one floor have been built. But it looks much the same as it did three months ago. No work seems to be happening.

The Edison, just south of One Lexington on Central, has a fence up, some grading done, and that's it. Lennar's apartments at Central and McDowell are moving very sloooowww.

Maybe I'm spoiled by Seattle. About 200 buildings, many of them skyscrapers, have been completed, permitted, or are under construction just downtown over the past couple of years. Things come out of the ground fast.

The Warehouse District

Railroad tracks running to Crystal Ice at Fourth Avenue and Jackson in the heart of the district. The plant not only provided ice deliveries to businesses and homes, but produced blocks to fill the bunkers of railroad refrigerator cars. The blocks were dragged and placed through roof doors in the railcars by workers on catwalks using hooks.  McCulloch Bros./ASU Archives.

Phoenix's Warehouse District is finally seeing a payoff after years of destruction and false starts. How big a renaissance remains to be seen; coverage I've seen such as this doesn't quantify the new businesses. But something is happening. Most important, it involves creative firms and tech startups, not only restaurants.

The area saw an effervescence before, when artists discovered the historic buildings in the 1980s. But they were driven out by the arena, ballpark, Joe Arpaio's relentless jail expansions, Phoenix's ethos of tear-downs, and the city's lack of an effective preservation policy. The Jobs Corp moved into several buildings.

Some of the best buildings were lost. This helped fuel the successful fight in the mid-2000s to save the Sun Mercantile building, part of the city's old Chinatown. A few developers with stamina and perseverance, notably Michael Levine, refurbished some buildings. Another comeback attempt came with the opening of the unfortunately named Bentley Projects (the old Bell Laundry) in the 2000s, which included a restaurant, galleries, and a Poisoned Pen Bookstore. Too far from the core, that didn't take, either.

Phoenix never boasted a warehouse district with the size and great bones of, say, Denver, which has become a tremendous asset for an area anchored by the restored and expanded Denver Union Station. Phoenix was too small and limited in its economic heft. Still, what remains of the area is one of the city's treasures. It's one of the few places in Phoenix where you can find that coveted urban authenticity, with a variety of old buildings, narrow streets and density, that talented creatives seek.

The best of Rogue 2015

Photo by Eugene Scott

• Phoenix should leave the Greater Phoenix Economic Council: "GPEC can't serve the special needs of Phoenix and the appetite of the sprawl boyz. Maybe a few projects to far north Phoenix. But what has GPEC done for downtown, the Central Corridor or to fill abundant empty land along the light-rail line in the city? Not much if anything."

• The evolution of the press, radio, and television in Phoenix: "It is an open question of how much power "the Pulliam press" actually had in post-war Phoenix. The city was attracting large numbers of middle-class Anglos from the Midwest that already shared his larger political philosophy. Pulliam was a civic leader, but hardly the only one, and most shared a common vision of a "business friendly" low-rise city with minimal restrictions on individuals. At least on white people."

• Still got Dick Nixon to kick around: "For decades, Richard Nixon has been the devil to the left. But the left isn't politically relevant anymore (Jerry Ford Republicanism is what passes for "the left" in today's broken political spectrum). What's more consequential is that Nixon is now the devil to the right, which is more powerful than ever. So in the public square today, we are relitigating not Watergate but the domestic achievements of Tricky Dick."

Happy holidays

The saddest Christmas story I've encountered this year is the lack of holiday lights on Central Avenue.

From the time that I was a child until I left Phoenix in the late 1970s, decorations spanned Central downtown. You would also find the at Park Central, when it was still a mall.

Later, more compact displays were attached to the light poles along the main boulevard of the city. This continued in various reincarnations into the 2000s. But not this year.

So while Phoenix is full of places to see great Christmas lights, there's nothing on Central. This shows that despite the progress made in the core, something essential is lacking.

The cost of choices

We had a lively discussion on the previous column about people wanting choices in where they live. One of Phoenix's biggest competitive disadvantages is that is largely lacks the choice of a vibrant downtown and real urban neighborhoods. Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Denver, Portland and Seattle, among others have them. They also have suburbs, malls, championship golf, big boxes and chain restaurants. Phoenix mostly only offers the latter.

I have an urban sensibility; growing up close to a then lively downtown Phoenix I always have. So while I don't "get" the appeal of suburbia, much less the exurbia exemplified by the mess outside Prescott and in the Verde Valley, I don't want to harshly judge those who want that.

I only want them to pay for it. And they don't.

Suburbia and exurbia, for all their GOP "I got mine" individualist attitude, are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Let me count the ways.

• FHA, other federally backed mortgages, and the mortgage tax deduction enabled especially Anglos to buy houses in the Maryvales of America and their successors. Urban neighborhoods were often redlined and assistance was not available. Smart Growth America reported that these federal subsidies cost $450 billion a year.

• Freeways sucked the life out of cities and made suburbs more convenient. Freeways did nothing positive for cities and entailed the destruction of entire urban neighborhoods. In the case of Phoenix, freeways made otherwise worthless desert or land only valuable for agriculture into gold mines for sprawl developers. This, along with the massive subsidies detailed elsewhere, has proved highly distorting to market forces.

Cautious signs of hope

After spending two weeks in Phoenix, I'm tempted to conclude that the central city is undergoing its most robust efflorescence in decades. And it is happening below the "red line" of Camelback Road.

This is not based on any single project — the Central Station tower and new arena for the Suns and perhaps Coyotes may or may not happen. Rather, dozens of smaller projects, mostly residential, are completed, under construction or in advanced site work or planning. Lots that have sat vacant for decades are seeing construction. Buildings are being restored — one example is the nice job the Old Spaghetti Factory did with its two former mansions on Central.

Commerce is happening, albeit on a mostly small scale, with startups and a few companies moving jobs into downtown, Midtown and Uptown. The restaurant scene is booming. We're far beyond the days when we struggled to keep Durant's, My Florist, Portland's and Cheuvront in business. Traffic is busy on Central again; more important, so is pedestrian and bicycle activity. Outside the core but in the old city many shopping strips have been given new looks.

This is small potatoes for what should be happening in the core of one of the nation's largest cities. Seattle has about a hundred major projects recently completed or underway, many of them highrises. The skyline is being dramatically remade. But considering the damage done to Phoenix over many decades of civic malpractice, it is verging on a spectacular rebirth.

They won't build it...

So shopping-strip magnate Michael Pollack is worried about potential wording in Chandler's new general plan that might, might, possibly, someday allow light rail.

As the Arizona Republic reported, "It may be years from ever happening, but even the thought of extending the Valley's light-rail system from Mesa south into Chandler along Arizona Avenue is stirring strong opposition from a few key foes concerned that wording in a proposed planning document is a tacit endorsement of such a rail line."

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of people in America: those with urban values and those with suburban values. The latter can sometimes "get it," how the health of an entire metropolitan area is dependent on a vibrant downtown — Oklahoma City is a good example. More often they don't, and the two tribes can't even speak the same language.

One of the biggest points of controversy is transit. Those with suburban values, especially "conservative" ideologues, have made a fetish of opposing any mode of travel that is not based on the automobile. Armed with seemingly economically invincible talking points regarding costs and often backed by Koch brothers money, they have defeated numerous transit measures nationally. They also speak in code to suburban whites, that transit will bring Those People to apartheid suburbia.

This is what makes Phoenix's light rail such a miracle. In the face of hysterical and often thuggish opposition, the starter line was completed and has now been expanded, with more growth on the way. It is highly popular. None of the predictions of doom happened. Even left turns are easy. We built it, you bastards (WBIYB).

Chandler won't. Never fear.

Little pieces

The interior courtyard of the Tovrea Mansion in happier days. (Steve Weiss photo).

A reader from Michigan wrote, "My wife and I were married at the Tovrea Mansion in 2000 (on today in fact — 6 Oct.). Not the Castle, but the mansion on 46th Street and Van Buren. We went back to see the building last week and found it abandoned, looted, and partially destroyed."

Almost everyone in Phoenix who pays attention knows about the Tovrea Castle and its storied past. The unique building was saved thanks to the city and a preservation effort led by former Mayor John Driggs. Amazingly, a number of loud voices opposed this and wanted the building demolished, the saguaros bladed.

The Tovrea Mansion was not so fortunate. A large ranch house surrounded by tall oleanders and palm trees, it was unknown by most Phoenicians. The pioneer Tovrea family lived there for decades.  By the 2000s, it had been turned into an events center.

A train to Tucson

When I was a boy, the Southern Pacific Railroad operated six trains a day between Phoenix Union Station and Tucson. They were part of the fading American passenger-rail system, once the finest in the world.

The top of the line were the crack Sunset Limited, SP's flagship running between New Orleans and Los Angeles (once it went all the way to San Francisco). Phoenix to Tucson took less than two-and-a-half hours. Then the Golden State Limited, another premier train operated by SP from Los Angeles to Tucumcari, N.M., where it was handed off to the Rock Island for the trip to Chicago. Finally, there was the remains of the Imperial, once a fine train in its own right but by the 1960s a mail train with a single coach.

But the trains were dying, helped along by the Postal Service canceling the vital mail contracts in 1967-68. Amtrak took over a much diminished Sunset — three days a week — and it left Phoenix in the 1990s when the state would not help maintain the northern main line. Phoenix is the largest city in America with no passenger trains.

I mention this history as the Arizona Department of Transportation studies passenger rail between Phoenix and Tucson. It has gotten press. But is it possible?

The transportation vote

See the comments section for an open thread on the vote.

Phoenix's Proposition 104 promises to extend light-rail and bus service, as well as make street improvements. Everyone who wishes the city well should vote for it.

Now that's out of the way, let's examine some lesser-explored aspects of the issue. I say "issue," because the debate has been won. WBIYB. Phoenix light rail is highly successful, as I predicted when advocating it — and getting death threats from the Bs in the latter B of WBIYB — as a columnist at the Arizona Republic.

A quick note on costs. With the $2 billion the state wants to flush down the toilet on the South Mountain Freeway, we could more than double the original 20 miles of light rail. That Arizona is still building freeways shows this racket for what it is: a way to keep spec construction going and enriching the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Costs? Freeways destroy cities and farmland, spread pollution and emit enormous amounts of carbon into the global commons called the atmosphere. That these costs are hidden "externalities" does not mean they don't exist. Transit is a bargain. Enough said about the "light rail costs too much" Big Lie.

Writing Phoenix history

Apparently having read the Phoenix 101 posts, the History Press approached me to write a concise history of the city. In a hurry.

I thought this would be a compilation of Phoenix 101, but it turned out they wanted an entirely new book. Foolishly I signed up anyway. That's why I've been gone.

The final product may never see a bookshelf. It is certainly not an attempt to compete with the fine academic histories of Philip VanderMeer, William S. Collins or Bradford Luckingham. There are no doubt more qualified people who could have undertaken this project. Instead, at 32,000 words, it is an interpretive history of a fascinating city and one of great importance to America (whether America or even Phoenicians realize it). Think of it as the dissertation I never wrote.

Mindful of Harry Truman's admonishment that "the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know," I dug deep into primary and secondary sources. I'm glad I did it. Here is some of what I learned:

Phoenix 101: Margaret Hance

When Margaret Hance was elected mayor of Phoenix in November 1975, she was not, as is often claimed, the first woman to lead a major city. That marker goes to Bertha Knight Landes, elected mayor of Seattle in 1926. Hance was second.

Hance's tenure was far more consequential, as we shall see. Still, the pair are twined in dissonances.

Landes, who ran advocating "municipal housecleaning," has been "honored" by Seattle naming its misbegotten tunnel boring machine after her. Hance is memorialized by a park in the heart of the city, a place she did little to help and much to harm.

Margaret Taylor Hance was almost a native, being brought from Iowa to Mesa at age three, in 1926. Her father went to work for Valley Bank, where became an executive vice president. Despite the onset of the Depression, the family moved to what is now Willo. (I am told they lived in the same house on Cypress Street in the 1930s where I grew up in the 1960s. In the '30s, unlike the '60s, it was a high-end neighborhood on the streetcar.)

Although she attended the University of Arizona, she transferred to the elite Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., from whence she graduated. In 1945, she married Robert Hance, who had trained as an Army Air Forces pilot in the Valley during World War II. Her brother, Glen Taylor, went on to become news editor at the Phoenix Gazette, retiring as assistant managing editor in 1983.

She settled into the comfortable and predictable life of an upper-middle-class Republican Phoenix woman. Robert went to work for Valley National Insurance and rose. The couple had three children. Margaret — known as Marge or Margie — volunteered for numerous organizations and joined the Junior League.

#tbt Downtown 'mall'

With a proposal being floated for a new arena plus a mall in downtown Phoenix, here are some photos that show retail in downtown's heyday, when it was the largest retail center in Arizona:

Note the features: Stores right up on the sidewalk facing the street; shade awnings; a mix of local and national retailers; life on the street, and every few steps a new doorway beckons to shoppers. This is what downtown Phoenix once had and let get away.

It represents a totally different experience from a suburban mall, and that's what draws shoppers to the downtowns such as Seattle and San Francisco that kept their retail.

Arizona Center, built facing in and away from the street, is the cautionary tale. Too suburban. People will choose to stay in the real suburbs.

Cities that lost their downtown retail almost never get it back. One example is Charlotte, for all its prosperity and workers and residents downtown. San Diego is the exception and it involved a mall. But Horton Plaza was wedged into the edge of the dense Gaslamp Quarter and became an organic part of a walking downtown, where more retail was added in refurbished buildings.

 

Glendale's gambles

My Seattle Times colleague Geoff Baker has an insightful column about Glendale's NHL arena disaster. Sometimes one needs to be at a distance — and a distance from advertiser and fan pressure — to see things clearly.

The situation remains very much in play. Mayor Jerry Weiers may back down in the face of a lawsuit from the team formerly and rightly known as the Phoenix Coyotes. Or the courts could rule against the city's attempt to break its lease. Then the team can socialize its losses until the contract allows it to leave in three years.

But some aspects of what Baker calls "the Glendale fiasco" require Homey's distinctive local touch. Which I will proceed to attempt.

As with almost everything in Arizona today, Glendale's misery began with a real-estate hustle and taking an asset away from Phoenix, trying to make it the hole in the donut.

Architectural disasters

In retrospect, it was foolhardy of me to promise on Facebook that I would write about Phoenix's worst architectural disasters and ... could they be fixed? Then to ask for nominations by Facebook friends.

There's just too much bad architecture out there (and no, not only in Phoenix). Now it's too late, a promise is a promise, so here are my top (or bottom) three worst buildings in Phoenix.

1. Phoenix Police Headquarters. Check out the seamless intertwining of Brutalist architecture, 1960s fortress mentality, and everything from the sides of the building to the abundant, heat-radiating concrete surrounding the structure screaming "bleak!" 

It is an almost perfect example of sterile, dehumanizing, soul-killing, boring hack-work. It even lacks the authority projected by the 1929 City Hall/County Courthouse. Instead, the taxpayers financed a block of ugly that has stood through some 45(!) years of indifference and civic malpractice.

2. The Arizona Executive Office Tower. Yes, this is Gov. Roscoe's aerie.

Built in 1974, only about four years after the building above, this mishap has the same dreary "pour boiling oil on the invaders" upper-story rampart as its cousin.

Yet its transgression goes further because it is attached to the charming territorial capitol building and addition. The top of the tower overpowers the modest copper dome of the capitol. The two buildings clash like a Chevy Vega front on a Rolls Royce.

The hard way

It was only a matter of time before the national media figured out that California is not the only place at risk from historic drought and the dwindling Colorado River.

Here is Slate, wrong from the first paragraph. And the Washington Post, which doesn't seem to have a clue about the dreary reality of Arizona's economy.

As a counterweight, I promoted this 2013 column on Twitter and Facebook — and traffic on this site exploded. It is important that the media elites understand the complex water issues facing Arizona. I urge you to read or re-read it.

Can Arizona and Phoenix survive the drought caused by man-made climate change? Probably. The question is whether it will be the easy way or the hard way.

But here's an easy back-of-the-bar-napkin calculus. The population of Maricopa County, mostly metro Phoenix, was 1.5 million in 1980, before the completion of the Central Arizona Project canal and the proliferation of sprawl that preceded it and was anticipating it.

Today, the population is more than 4 million. So in the long run, metropolitan Phoenix's sustainable population — in any pleasantly liveable way — is that 1980 figure. Two-and-a-half million people need to leave, head back to the Midwest and the East.

The new red line

Redlining is the practice of, in the United States, denying, or charging more for, services such as banking, insurance, access to health care, or even supermarkets, or denying jobs to residents in particular, often racially determined, areas. — Wikipedia

The SOBs are well-known, and what an appropriate acronym. It means the north Scottsdale fatcats who refuse to go south of Bell (SOB) and measure their specialness by pronouncing the city of Phoenix as "the Mexican Detroit."

Most people with means who move to metro Phoenix don't consider it "home," as in a place to treasure and be invested in the common good. They are drunk with the resort "lifestyle" use-it-up new extraction industry. Being "exclusive" means drawing red lines to show one's superiority. To define zones that are scary and lost, whether this is true or not.

In recent years, I've become more aware of another red line within the city: Camelback Road.

Writing off the news*

So wealthy Republican Cara Carlton Sneed, aka "Carly Fiorina," is running for president. She represents everything wrong in an America run by oligarchy, including running venerable Hewlett Packard into the ground and laying off tens of thousands of people.

The two businessmen who became president were Warren G. Harding and George W. Bush. In fact, government can't and shouldn't be run like a business. A business, especially a big business today, seeks only its own growth and increasing stock price. Too many of its leaders, Fiorina included, are sociopaths with no notion of the public good. So she'll fit right with the Republican contenders.

It tells us something that this supposed titan of technology forgot to register her domain name.

Now, on to Arizona...

• I read that McDowell Road in Scottsdale is "continues (its) resurgence." With what little capital that metro Phoenix attracts clustering to the eastside — which should be a hair-on-fire issue at Phoenix City Hall — this isn't surprising. Here's what McDowell won't be: walkable, livable, or accessible to frequent transit. Make it shady, narrow it by four lanes or so, extend light rail, and plant mature shade trees and then you're talking.

• Narrowing a portion of 32nd Street is a good start in Phoenix. Unfortunately, it is outside the Salt River Project so the shade trees that would make it walkable for all but those seeking skin cancer is impossible. It is also served only by the 16 bus, not enough. So one-and-a-half cheers.

Bringing forth fruit

I first met Kit Danley in 2001 when she asked me to visit Neighborhood Ministries at its new home, hard against the railroad yards on Fillmore Street west of 19th Avenue.

It was a place that held fond memories for me. As a child, I had spent many hours train watching at the nearby Mobest Yard of the Santa Fe Railway. In those days, Fillmore ran through to 19th Avenue, and this end of the yard featured a cleaning facility for passenger cars (when Phoenix had passenger trains) and the locomotive turntable. South was the busy and (to my young eyes) imposing Valley Feed and Seed, where railcars were switched against the warehouse for loading and unloading.

Valley Feed and Seed looked very different in 2001: abandoned, decomposing, the grounds full of debris, silos that once provided seeds for this great agricultural valley now empty, eight acres of sadness. It was a graveyard that extended to Van Buren Street. Fillmore had been closed to a cul-de-sac when the yard was moved south (to lessen the train delays on McDowell). The surrounding area was known for crime now, not commerce.

But this was the site that Neighborhood Ministries had purchased in 1998 for an ambitious campus that would increase its outreach to the poor. By the time of my first visit, the organization had raised $2.2 million to begin renovations.

I liked Danley immediately. She was a near-native, went to Scottsdale High (I went to Coronado), and had chosen to make a stand in the wounded heart of Phoenix, founding Neighborhood Ministries in 1982. She was the polar opposite of the city of the short hustle, the state where hate was peddled for political profit.

And she would be frustrated that I appear to be making this column about her (it's not; read on). Like her spiritual forebear in Phoenix, Father Emmett McLoughlin, she felt called by Christ to minister here to the least and the lost, to the stranger and the wanderer, and find Christ in them.

Phoenix should leave GPEC

A little history: The Greater Phoenix Economic Council was formed in the aftermath of the 1990 recession. Fueled by savings-and-loan grifters and spec-building con artists (Charlie Keating combined both roles), it was the worst downturn the city had faced since the Depression.

Up to that point, of course.

It stung that the "infamous" and "negative" Barron's article calling out Phoenix was correct. But there were enough locally headquartered companies, civic stewards and sane political leaders remaining to be concerned about more than image. Phoenix and Arizona started a serious effort to diversify beyond real estate, to recapture the efforts of the late 1940s through the 1960s aimed at creating a robust, high-quality economy.

And for several years, GPEC was successful. The keys were the first president, Ioanna Morfessis, who had a sophisticated understanding of economic competitiveness and development; also, she was backed by a board of business titans who could knock heads and write checks. One other element helped: the city of Phoenix was still the unquestioned center of gravity.

Unfortunately, the decade saw 40 percent population growth and massive new sprawl. At the same time, most of the city's corporate crown jewels were either bought or significantly downsized and almost all the stewards died or retreated. The appetite to seriously build a quality economy, to sustain the cluster strategy, waned. In this "drunk on growth" atmosphere, Morfessis left.

She was followed by Rick Weddle and Barry Broome, both capable. But GPEC and the metropolitan area had changed dramatically.

'Is Arizona hopeless?'

This was the most frequently asked question I encountered in Phoenix recently. Admittedly, the Resistance was demoralized by the results of the election. But the query-cum-statement came from more than activists — indeed, they are more likely to be too invested in the fight to allow a crack of doubt to enter.

Those asking are natives or have lived in the state for many years or decades. They are not nostalgiacs. They are intelligent and pragmatic. Some are considering leaving, adding to the brain drain of urbanites who come to Phoenix starry eyed at a "blank slate" only to discover the many barriers to progress and depart for Portland, Denver and Vancouver, B.C.

In raising this issue, I don't want to provoke the usual denial, sunny codependency or angry defensiveness. I was surprised that so many people, unprompted, asked the question.

Is Arizona hopeless?

It certainly doesn't seem that way to the Republicans and "conservative"-leaning independents who vote. They continue to get the place they want, with the exception of such socialist outbreaks as light rail (WBIYB). Some are people with whom I went to school but remained there. They are decent, smart individuals and, against all odds of the Cold Civil War, we remain friends. Anyway, the cons have no reason to complain — but that won't stop it from manufacturing its lifeline of perpetual grievance and victimhood. They tend to be sore winners.

So the question applies to others. How many are there? It's difficult to say with precision. People keep moving to Arizona, albeit at a slower pace. A Morrison Institute poll of more than a decade ago found that a strong plurality of residents would leave the state if they could.

Who would ask such a question? Anyone to the left of today's "conservative" dogma (which would include Barry Goldwater, were he alive); liberals and progressives; people with urban values; those concerned about the destruction of the environment; those disheartened by the struggle to build and maintain civic, economic and cultural assets as befits a big city, and the ones beaten down by the struggle as Arizona has become a one-party, one-ideology state.

Is Arizona hopeless?

You know this is the wrong place to look for booster lies ("Talton hates Arizona"). And as much as I would love to write a stirring column channelling Henry V or Churchill, it is a little late for in the game for that.

So the answer partly depends partly on how one defines Arizona and how one defines hopeless.

Stick it to Phoenix

I was going to write about Ferguson but the reaction I provoked on Facebook yesterday over the name change for the Suns' home made me switch gears. I wrote, "Talking Stick Resort Arena. That pretty much says it all about Phoenix's inability to be a big city."

So far, 50 people have "liked" it. Much debate came in the comments. Aside from a small number of the usual why-are-you-picking-on-Phoenix notes, there was "Pitiful," "We have no visionary leadership in this city," "This all just makes me want to cry," and "Wait'll they move both teams to Talking Stick neighborhood. .....$10 says that is in the works."

On the other hand, I made some fans (so they said) mad for allegedly being unfair to Phoenix. Still others thought it wasn't a big deal. But they took the time to comment. Someone made the excuse that Phoenix is a "young city," a canard I have tried to knock down before. A couple of comments gave the whiff of, "he doesn't just hate Phoenix, he tortures kittens for sport (and from Seattle, which doesn't even have an NBA team!)".

It started as an offhand comment. Then it became clear I had run sandpaper over a very raw nerve.

Let's stipulate that pro sports are one of the many cesspools in our evermore corrupt and venal society. This is true everywhere. Naming rights always struck me as odd. Who chooses to do business with an outfit because their moniker is stuck on a sports arena? Maybe it's like penis enlargement spam. Somebody must be responding or it would go away.

All over the country, team owners have not been content to extort palaces from the taxpayers under threat of leaving. They also want to milk more cash from naming rights. Only a few places — Wrigley Field, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park — have avoided the sellout. It's one more way to suck income upwards while also destroying the history and even poetry of many former sports venue names.

Novel open thread

As I wrap up the next David Mapstone Mystery, I am going to have to take a week or two away from Rogue. I'll keep the Front Page and the special report pages (including Arizona's Continuing Crisis) updated. So you should have plenty to discuss. Thanks for your support.

 

Phoenix 101: The Seventies

Central Avenue and Van Buren in 1972. Note the full block of businesses heading north to the Westward Ho. Central was still a two-way street.

No series of events better epitomized the 1970s and the turning point they marked in Phoenix than the fight over freeways, specifically the "inner loop" of the Papago Freeway.

Most Phoenicians had a vague idea that freeways were a possibility since the Wilber Smith & Associates plan was adopted in 1960. Interstate 10 had been completed to Tucson and was abuilding from the west. By mid-decade it had reached Tonopah, requiring a long drive over largely country roads to reach. Real-estate values plummeted along the path of the inner loop. But by 1970, Phoenix's freeway "system" consisted of only the Black Canyon (Interstate 17) which curved at Durango to become the Maricopa (I-10).

All this changed as the new decade opened and the plan's stark reality became clear. Specifically, the Papago would vault into the air, reaching 100 feet as it crossed Central Avenue. Traffic would enter and exit via massive "helicoils" at Third Avenue and Third Street. The freeway was promoted as being Phoenix's defining piece of architecture.

It didn't take Eugene Pulliam and the anti-freeway advocacy of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette to make most Phoenicians horrified. In 1973, voters vehemently rejected the inner loop. They only had to look 372 miles west to see the destruction wrought by freeways. They didn't want Phoenix to "become another Los Angeles."

Better than nothing?

A rendering of Phoenix Central Station, the oval-shaped tower that would be built at Central and Van Buren.

This year, Seattle's core has seen 100 buildings permitted, under construction or recently completed. In central Phoenix, by my count, there's the proposed skyscraper above, the University of Arizona's 10-story research building on the Phoenix Biosciences Campus, the ASU college of law, and a 368-unit Lennar apartment complex in lower Midtown.

It's better than nothing, right?

Phoenix Central Station by Smith Partners would be the most interesting, rising 34 stories with 475 apartments, 30,000 square feet of commercial space and, of course, a parking garage.

The tower would rise above the homely central transit station, which nobody will miss, but retain the use as a transit hub. It has its virtues: more apartments for downtown residents, close proximity to ASU and a shape that would provide a bit of variety from the mostly dreary boxes that make up the skyline of the nation's sixth-largest city.

Young Phoenix

An interesting report, The Young and Restless and the Nation's Cities, came out recently from the City Observatory think tank. The premise is straight-forward:

The young and restless — 25 to 34-year-olds with a bachelor's degree or higher of education, are increasingly moving to the close-in neighborhoods of the nation's large metropolitan areas. This migration is fueling economic growth and urban revitalization.... Businesses are increasingly locating in or near urban centers to better tap into the growing pool of well-educated workers and because these center city locations enable firms to better compete for talent locally and recruit talent from elsewhere.

The top gainers of this coveted demographic from 2000 to 2012 are what you would expect: Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Silicon Valley, New York, the Research Triangle and Seattle.

But some among the leaders are cities against which Phoenix should benchmark itself and ought to be able to compete with: Denver, Austin, the Twin Cities and Columbus.

Instead, by a critical metric metropolitan Phoenix comes in 45th. Behind Orlando, Birmingham, Rochester and Indianapolis, hardly cities one would associate with urban cool.

The death of authentic Phoenix

Authentic Phoenix can still be found at Durant's.

The impending closure of Baker Nursery and Mary Coyle's raises an issue beyond losing beloved businesses or even the extreme struggle faced by locally owned firms in Phoenix. It cuts to something essential to a real city even if it is difficult to define: authenticity.

Critics may dismiss this as nostalgia, a cheap emotion for a golden past that never was (this is one way Very Serious People invalidate my arguments now). Or some academic fad of the latte-quaffing creative class elitists. Instead, it is critical to a city's success.

"Authentic" in connection with a city involves historic roots, local ownership, places that are valued, human scale and encouraging human interaction, aesthetics, a distinctive vibe ("cool"), and a strong degree of critical mass and density. The asteroid belts of suburbia with their chain restaurants and malls are not authentic — they annihilate it. No wonder educated young people, many empty nest boomers and world talent want to move to authentic cities.

As these losses continue (and Mary Coyle's had been dead to some since it left its 15th Ave. and Thomas location to flee north of Camelback), it's more than the city cratering or looking like Everyplace America. It is the death of a tangable part of the civilization, a concept beyond the MBAs that run the country or the real-estate grifters that run Phoenix.  A point comes where too much driving is required to reach this or that "iconic" survivor.

Air war over Phoenix

Friends in my old 'hood, the historic districts north of downtown Phoenix, have asked me to write about a change in the approach paths to Sky Harbor International Airport that is bringing airplanes lower and louder over these neighborhoods.

Coverage has not been lacking (see here and here). But I won't pile on repetitively because my initial reaction is to be...torn.

When I lived in Ocean Beach in San Diego, everybody knew when it was 6 a.m. That's because flight operations were commencing at Lindbergh Field whose one runway took outbound planes directly over our neighborhood. I lived a block-and-a-half from the beach, in a cool district the tourists usually missed — but the airplane noise came with the bargain.

Cities are noisy. As I write from the 10th floor of my downtown Seattle condo, I hear traffic, sirens, people yelling and, yes, airplanes approaching Sea-Tac (albeit from a higher altitude). During the daytime there is construction noise from one of the scores of new skyscrapers going up. The sounds are one of the energizing things about living in the heart of a city.

Central Phoenix, by contrast, is uncommonly quiet. There's the hum of the Papago Freeway. At night, the Santa Fe train whistles that remind me of my boyhood (one hardly hears the Union Pacific now compared to when it was the Southern Pacific years ago and Phoenix was a major point on its main line). Otherwise, especially if you are a block in from a major arterial, it is perhaps the quietest place in the metro area. It is much quieter than when I was a boy and central Phoenix was vibrant.

Bones

The other night I was in a Twitter discussion with economist and blogger Noah Smith about the implosion of Las Vegas' hopes to create a vibrant "real" downtown (see the links on the City Desk). It's a sad moment, but I remarked that Vegas didn't have good bones. Smith asked a logical question for anyone not among the urbanophiles: What are good bones?

Since I now have more than 140 characters, let me answer more clearly. "Good bones" are a variety of architectural styles, especially pre-World War II — Art Deco, Beaux-Arts, Spanish Colonial Revival, Gothic Revival, Chicago School, Victorian, etc.

Good bones are dense downtowns and human-scaled neighborhood retail districts right up to the sidewalk. Parks designed by the likes of Frederick Law Olmsted or Adolph Strauch. Inspiring public spaces. Narrow streets and real boulevards. Palatial theaters and concert halls. Grand bridges. Infrastructure such as subways and magnificent railway terminals. Stately public buildings. Packed row houses. Downtown retail (especially a hat store). These are all good bones.

Here, Las Vegas is in an even worse position than Phoenix. In 1940, the end of the Art Deco era, its population was 8,422. The only architectural asset it gained was the lovely streamline moderne Union Pacific Railroad station above — demolished for a garish hotel in the 1960s.

While I was away

John Sperling passed on. I am mindful of Horace's de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but Sperling was a public figure of consequence, deserving an assessment. In keeping with the life he led, Sperling died in the Bay Area, not the city whose name he took for his empire of for-profit education.

The New York Times wrote, "A survivor of childhood illness, learning disability, poverty and physical abuse, he earned a doctorate from the University of Cambridge; a liberal former union organizer, he spent years battling government regulation; a longtime professor who did not enter business until his 50s, he became a spectacularly successful capitalist."

The University of Phoenix made him fabulously wealthy. His net worth in 2002 was $1.1 billion and he spent 20 years on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. With the troubles of parent company Apollo and its stock drop, he was below a billion in 2013.

He reveled in being quirky, combative and rebellious, especially against the education establishment and the government. And yet the GI Bill — authored by Arizona Sen. Ernest McFarland — allowed Sperling to get his bachelor's degree from Reed College in Portland, Ore. Federal student loans turned what would have once been considered a "business college" into a mighty profit engine.

Among the individuals who wrecked the commons, Sperling is right up there. Privatizing profits, socializing losses, the cost and quality of an education at the University of Phoenix and other for-profit schools deeply questionable.

Phoenix 101: What's downtown, what's not

This is downtown (pre CityScape):

This isn't downtown (it's Midtown):

This isn't downtown, either (it's 24th Street and Camelback):

I wouldn't dare move to Chicago and claim that Hyde Park is the Loop. Nor could I say Hawthorne is downtown Minneapolis. Cincinnatians would quickly set me straight if I said Over the Rhine is downtown — downtown begins at Central Parkway. The natives in all these cities wouldn't let me get away with it. Nor would the transplants who felt a convert's zeal to protect the geographical integrity of their cities.

Yet people in "the Valley" (Silicon? Red River — of the north or of the south? San Joaquin? San Fernando? Of the Jolly Ho Ho Ho Green Giant?), many of them from these very cities, get away with this transgression every day in Phoenix.

Downtown Phoenix runs from Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street, and from the railroad tracks to Fillmore, or perhaps Roosevelt. It includes the original townsite and some additions. City Hall's definition taking the northern boundary to McDowell is ahistorical.

Walkable Phoenix

This beautiful scene in central Phoenix is from 1917. It makes you want to step into the picture and stroll. Not bad for a small, isolated city in a brand new state. More about that later. Alas, today the same location is a blighted vacant lot south of two once-graceful houses that have been turned into the Old Spaghetti Factory, the lawns replaced by asphalt.

I write because of an article in one of the online nooks of Fast Company headlined, "Phoenix is Pulling Off an Urban Miracle: Transforming into a Walkable City." Read and decide for yourself. On Facebook, someone said it came off like a press release. The kindest interpretation is that it represents an aspiration. To make it real, a little history might help.

Although Phoenix's growth is closely connected to the automobile age, the city was actually once highly walkable.

Let's define our terms. By "walkable," I don't mean you can drive your car to a canal bank or a desert "preserve" and hike. Not even the enchantingly shady, last time I checked, Murphy's Bridle Path. I mean the arrangements I enjoy in Seattle, where almost everything — shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, culture, health care, transportation hubs — is a quick walk or bus/bike ride away. One doesn't need a car.

Prior to the mid-1950s, when sprawl took off and never looked back, Phoenix offered such a "lifestyle." For anyone who grew up in the actual town prior to World War II, it was taken for granted.

Even the G-men...

Dear Diary,

It seems that I cannot escape the toxic blob that Phoenix has become even when working on the new David Mapstone Mystery. I learn that the FBI's Phoenix Field Office decamped its Midtown fortress in 2010 for leased offices at Seventh Street and Deer Valley Road.

The FBI has a long history in Midtown, once being located on the second floor of a modest office still standing on the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Osborn. Back in the hardly innocent 1960s, it was labeled with "FBI" right on the outside wall. By the time I returned in the 2000s, the bureau was in a hulking, anonymous and heavily guarded midrise around Second Street and Indianola, with a motor pool a block away. If you tried to stop your car on the street to drink the Diet Coke you had purchased from the (now closed) nearby McDonald's, a uniformed federal officer appeared and told you to move on, no questions answered.

Now it is in a 210,202 square foot building built and owned by the Ryan Cos., meant to be home to the field office "for the next 20 years." News reports tell me the building won a LEED Silver design award, which shows the moronic/mendacious nature of these greenwash labels. The office is about 17 miles away from the most common destination for the feds, the Sandra Day "I Gave You The Presidency of George W. Bush" O'Connor Federal Courthouse downtown. It is located far from the urban footprint. How can this possibly be considered a green building?

Ballinger's masterpiece

When the pink-and-white Civic Center opened at Central and McDowell in 1950, it included a "little theater" but the art museum didn't come along for another nine years. Both were considered small confections to the main course: the public library. Things were not much different in 1974, when a young University of Kansas graduate named Jim Ballinger joined the museum's staff as curator of collections.

That the Phoenix Art Museum today enjoys national stature and draws prestigious international exhibitions — and has grown to take up most of the former Civic Center block — is mostly because of Ballinger, who announced Thursday that he will retire after 40 years with PAM. He became director in 1982. No other single figure has done more for the city's cultural landscape — to create, grow and sustain one — than Ballinger.

The reader should know that Ballinger and I are friends. We also were neighbors on Holly Street in Willo. But he first sought me out when I started as a columnist at the Arizona Republic, writing on such issues as the city and state's economic narrowness, lack of civic engagement, poor educational outcomes and difficulty in retaining talent. In our first conversation, he showed his incisive grasp of how such challenges would affect the future viability of cultural institutions.

Downtown podcast

Edward Jensen was kind enough to interview me on the history of downtown Phoenix and the issues facing it. Listen to the Downtown Phoenix Podcast here.

If you want a deeper dive, try the Phoenix 101 columns, "What Killed Downtown." Understanding this history is important for future progress.