Rogue Columnist

#tbt Low-rise city

This photograph was likely taken looking south from Del Webb's Phoenix Towers in the early 1960s. In the immediate foreground is Central Methodist Church at Palm Lane and Central Avenue. The coral/pink complex at left is the Phoenix Civic Center, with the large windows looking into the main library.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

The brick building on the northwest corner of McDowell was AT&T/Mountain Bell. After it was torn down (in the 1980s?), the lot stood empty for decades as project after project fell through. Now it is apparently going to be Lennar apartments. To show you how banking and flipping of empty, blighted land in the central city works, Lennar bought the parcel from Africa Israel Investments Ltd., based in Tel Aviv.

Back to circa 1961.... The taller buildings on the east side of Central include a hotel (Ramada Inn?), the First National Bank building (now occupied by ASU), and the Valley Bank/Professional Building with the famous rotating sign. On the west side, the Westward Ho, Security Building, and the Luhrs Building.

The 'Ho had already lost its title as tallest building in the state to the Guaranty Bank tower, located farther north in Midtown. But at 16 stories, not counting the radio tower, it is the tallest building in this photo.

To the right of the hotel tower is the skeleton of what would become downtown's first international-style box. It has mostly housed law-firms since.

The photo also shows a pre-Papago Freeway view (note straight, wide First Street running to the front of the Civic Center. The city's 1960 population was 439,170.

Read more about Phoenix history on Rogue's 101 archive.

AZ's lesser depression, con't

The Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. Historically, Arizona and Phoenix have bounced back quickly from downturns. Not this time.

As of April, the state had yet to recover to its pre-recession peak on non-farm employment:

More importantly, neither has metropolitan Phoenix, the economic powerhouse of the state:

This comes into more stark contrast when we add the performance of peer metros in the recovery:

Although Phoenix has a very large workforce, it is the only one among these peer Western metros that has yet to surpass its pre-recession employment in this very slow-growing economy.

#tbt Deco glory

For Throwback Thursday, we have the Professional Building circa 1970, in its last years as headquarters of Valley National Bank, the state's most important financial institution. To the left, the new Valley Center tower is being built and the bank will move its headquarters to the glass prism skyscraper within a couple of years.

Completed in 1932, the Professional Building is one of Phoenix's few examples of the magnificent Art Deco style in a skyscraper. The iconic Valley National revolving sign was added to the roof around 1960. Before that, the bank's name was on a rooftop neon sign. But the one you see was said to be the largest moving neon sign in the world. The top story with the large windows was added in 1958 for the executive dining room.

One of my early memories was when my grandmother and I parked in the alley between the building and the Hotel Adams (far right in the photo), around 1962, to wait for my mother who worked across the street. A man ran past our car followed by several Phoenix Police officers. A bank robber. He was soon led back past us in handcuffs.

After a stint as Merabank in the S&L hustles, the building has sat empty for a shamefully long period. Perhaps it may finally be revived as a boutique hotel. An earlier effort collapsed in the recession. Maybe this time...

The revolving sign was dismantled in 1972 and hauled away to a junk yard.

 

Phoenix 101: Birth of crazy

The Phoenix Civic Center, built with the support of Councilman Barry Goldwater, was seen as an example of profligacy by hardcore right-wingers. This side of the center faces Central. Today most of the site is the Phoenix Art Museum.

It is tempting to see the likes of Diane Douglas, John Huppenthal, Tom Horne-y, "Better Call Sal" DiCiccio and the entire Kookocracy as a recent phenomenon in Arizona. It's certainly comforting to us natives.

Barry Goldwater wasn't raving mad, we will tell you (the "lobbing one into the men's room of the Kremlin" was a joke). He came to regret his early opposition to federal civil rights laws, and was instrumental in helping desegregate Phoenix's schools. He desegregated Goldwater's Department Store, as well as promoting minority managers. As a city councilman, Goldwater supported public improvements, including bonds for the 1950 Civic Center (and he backed every Phoenix bond measure thereafter). In the 1980s and 1990s, Arizona's new conservatives repudiated him.

The truth is that Arizona was always a conservative state, in a narrow definition of the term. But for decades most citizens understood it wouldn't have existed without enormous federal largesse. No wonder majorities voted for FDR all four times he stood for the presidency. Sen. Carl Hayden was a progressive and New Deal Democrat. His fellow Democratic Senator, Ernest McFarland was the father of the GI Bill.

But the Kookocracy has roots that reach back more than half a century in Phoenix, to a forgotten City Council election.

'Til Kingdom come

After spending more than six years with Republicans questioning whether he is an American citizen and likening him to Hitler, the snub by the Saudi king was just another day at the office for Barack Obama.

But I can't help thinking what Harry Truman would do. More than once, confronted by the infamous "Do Nothing" Republican Congress, which is the Constitutional Convention by comparison with their successors today, Truman said in various iterations, "You may not like me, but you sure as hell will respect the office of the President of the United States."

I've got no problem doing the Full Harry on the House of Saud.

In 2010, Mr. Obama agreed to sell $60 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. I'm sure that made the Military Industrial Complex happy, but think how much $60 billion would do to rebuild our lethally decrepit passenger rail system? (Amtrak's subsidy — and all modes of transportation, especially airlines and roads are subsidized — will be $1.1 billion if the GOP House has its way.

And let's quit buying Saudi oil — nearly $58 million a day as of February. Sure, they can sell to the Chinese, but that will be more problematic when we withdraw the U.S. Navy from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. Let the People's Liberation Army Navy or David Cameron's tiny Royal Navy pick up the slack.

Most of that Saudi oil, like carbon all over the world, needs to stay in the ground if we are to avoid leaving our grandchildren a planet out of a science-fiction nightmare. This is a good start. It would likely speed conversion to renewables, greater conservation, energy innovation and, yes, more trains. We have a surplus of oil to see through the transition.

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.