Rogue Columnist

Phoenix and skyscrapers

Valley Center, now the Chase Tower, under construction in 1972. At 483 feet, it remains the city's tallest building.

The Republic recently ran a story to answer the question of why Phoenix lacks the skyscrapers that are one defining characteristic of other big cities. One of the problems of a place with so many newcomers is the loss of historical knowledge. So the story was, at best, incomplete.

The two big reasons given were automobile-based sprawl and a "polycentric" city with many cores. But both apply to other cities with much higher and more distinctive downtown skylines. Los Angeles comes to mind. It has "downtowns" in Century City, West LA, and Hollywood. It is a city built around the car, although it has rebuilt an extensive rail transit system.

But downtown LA, which is staging an astonishing comeback, is home to an impressive skyline. The Wilshire Grand, finished in 2017 and standing 1,100 feet with its spire is more than twice as tall as Phoenix's Chase Tower. The same is true of the U.S. Bank Tower, completed in 1989. About 28 skyscrapers there are taller than Chase.

Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte have cheaper outlying land and sprawl, but each has a much more impressive skyline than Phoenix.

One big reason downtown Phoenix lacks taller buildings is its proximity to Sky Harbor International Airport. Valley National Bank wanted its new headquarters to be even taller, but the plan was quashed by the FAA. Sky Harbor is not much closer to downtown than Logan airport to downtown Boston, but Logan's runways primarily run southwest to northeast. In Phoenix, the runways are east-to-west and airplanes usually fly directly south of downtown. Gaining altitude means expending more jet fuel, especially in summer. And Sky Harbor has enormous influence at city hall. This has prevented doable towers at a higher number of floors at Third Avenue and Van Buren and further west.

Phoenix's historic theaters

Today's Valdemar A. Cordova Municipal Court Building occupies the site of young Phoenix's first major theater, the Patton Grand, which opened in 1898. The new motion-picture industry was just getting started, so the theater hosted a variety of events such as plays and concerts.

It was also a point of pride in a town with a population of 5,544, which had made it through the national financial panics and local droughts and floods that characterized that decade. The theater sat 1,200 people. It also boasted hefty backstage spaces, based on the photo above, with room for curtains, lighting, and scenery.

E.M. Dorris, of the prominent merchant family, bought the theater at the end of 1899. It became the Dorris Opera House, the name by which most old Phoenicians and history buffs know it. Until the completion of the Phoenix Union High School Auditorium, the Dorris was the heartbeat of civic events, from traveling musicians, plays, and speakers, to political and union gatherings. It then settled in as a movie theater.

But, at Third Avenue and Washington, it was only one of many movie houses within walking distance of the city center or the streetcars. Let's take a stroll to some of them.

Mayor Gallego

Kate Gallego is the first mayor of Phoenix in 20 years who I don't know personally. That has disadvantages and advantages. The downside: I haven't spent hours over coffee or in city hall getting tips, sharing gossip, and taking the individual's measure. On the other hand, she's pretty much a blank slate to me, which allows me to see her totally from the perspective of an outsider.

All I know is what I read in the newspapers, and from Phoenix insiders, to paraphrase Will Rogers. She's not the first woman mayor of Phoenix — that distinction goes to Margaret Hance (and Thelda Williams was interim mayor). She's young — 37. She's smart, because she went to Harvard and everyone who's been touched by crimson is smart, or so we're told. On the Council, she supported transit but, wrongly to my mind, opposed upgrades to keep the Phoenix Suns downtown. Gallago is a relative newcomer. Otherwise, she's an unknown commodity.

The last time Phoenix had such a young mayor was the four years of Paul Johnson, who was in his early thirties when he took office in 1990. It was an unhappy tenure. Phoenix was hit with its worst recession since the 1930s and most projects from a big bond issue, which had been passed in the Goddard years, had to be postponed or downsized (one being a new City Hall). How much of this had to do with Johnson's youth is debatable — he was dealt a bad hand and to many did the best he could — but his relative lack of experience hurt him. To be extra fair, Terry Goddard was an impossible act to follow.

Karl Eller, an appreciation

The last time I sat down with Karl Eller in his office on the Camelback Corridor, he said, "If I were 30, I'd move to China."

It was classic Eller: Ambitious, brash, optimistic, visionary. This was in the 2000s, before Xi Jinping's crackdown, when the People's Republic seemed to be an endless source of opportunity. Rather like the Phoenix of the 1960s and 1970s, when he was young.

Eller, age 90, died on Sunday. He was the last of the old Phoenix stewards — people such as Walter Bimson, Frank Snell, Eugene C. Pulliam, and John Teets who could knock heads and write checks, who saw their companies' interests as synonymous with the health of Phoenix. Those essential stewards no longer exist and Phoenix is crippled as a result.

If you grew up in that 1960s Phoenix — a new city of the future, or so it seemed — you couldn't drive down a street without seeing Eller's name on the bottom of a billboard. Eller Outdoor was his first big score, a business he bought from the outdoor advertising pioneer Foster & Kleiser, for whom he worked as a "lease man." With roots in the Northwest, F&K, by this time a division of Metropolitan Broadcasting, offered Eller the billboard business in Phoenix, Tucson, Bakersfield, and Fresno. The $5 million price seemed impossible for a young man with net worth of $50,000, but he rounded up investors and closed the deal. He turned it into his first empire.

Tucson, Microsoft, etc.

The Tucson Festival of Books has come a long way over the past decade. In a state where cultural institutions struggle, literature-loving is low, and in a city that punches way below its weight, one of the nation's premier book events has blossomed. I was honored to be there again earlier this month, on author panels and signing my books.

This is a bad look for Phoenix, as the hep cats say now. The state's population, economic, and governmental center of gravity cedes such a prize to a city it otherwise rarely even thinks about? Sadly for Phoenix, yes. Several years of festivals at the Carnegie Library never took off. Efforts to go big went nowhere.

In the Old Pueblo, the Arizona Daily Star, then led by my friend John Humenik, developer Bill Viner, and Frank Farias of the University of Arizona went big right from the start. The festival is held on the central mall of the UA, whose support has been essential. But so has that of the newspaper — something never forthcoming in Phoenix — and a growing array of corporate and individual donors, hotels and small businesses. The Tucson Medical Center is a major sponsor.

Admission is free. Helped by an army of volunteers, everything runs smoothly. The Festival treats its many authors very well. The CSPAN bus, always the sign of a prestigious book event, was there both days. What a gem for Tucson. And a treat for Phoenicians, if one can stand the Ugliest Drive in America (and mourn the passenger trains we once enjoyed between the two cities and beyond).

ASU Empire

Arizona State University President Michael Crow recently wrote an op-ed pushing back against the Republic's libertarian/"Goldwater" Institute columnist on funding for higher education. Crow wrote in part:

The Arizona Constitution is clear — public schools will be free and universities will be as close to free as possible. It is also clear in the Constitution that the state will use tax revenue to support the universities and to maintain them. But that’s not where we are today. In 2019, we have evolved to the point where nearly 90 percent of the financial support and maintenance of the university comes from sources other than the state.

And:

ASU is one of the most efficient universities in the country. Yet, with our mission of making tuition affordable and the limited state investment we still have a shortfall of $225 million per year to educate resident students. We subsidize the cost of their education through other means, including out-of-state and international student tuition.

If anything, Crow pulled his punches. Arizona's low funding for universities is a scandal decades in the making, as the Legislature paid for tax cuts in part by continually reducing general fund money for higher ed and slashing funding that was never replaced. This has had a profound effect on hurting the state's competitiveness, as well as its constitutionally mandated promise to in-state students. I'd love to see a lawsuit over this.

But under Crow's leadership, ASU has worked around the Kooks to build an empire.

Block 23, a history

The first downtown Phoenix grocery in decades is scheduled to open in October, part of a mixed-used project that will also include 330 apartments. This will be a major test for the revived central core. I've been skeptical as to whether demand exists — Bashas' passed on the store during the Great Recession — but maybe ASU, more downtown residents, and proximity to light rail (WBIYB) will make the difference. Fry's is owned by Kroger, which wouldn't undertake such an enterprise without a good chance of success.

This is located on Block 23 of the original half-mile Phoenix townsite, laid out by William Hancock, one of the town's most influential citizens and friend of Jack Swilling, in 1870. Two parcels were set aside for public uses. One was Block 76, located between Washington and Jefferson and Cortes and Mohave streets, and Block 23 between Washington and Jefferson and Montezuma and Maricopa streets.

The former was designated for the county courthouse square. Block 23 was labeled "plaza," for municipal uses. In a turn of the 20th century renaming of streets, Cortes and Mohave became First and Second avenues. Montezuma and Maricopa became First and Second streets. In 1879, some 400 Phoenicians gathered on Block 23 to witness the hanging of two murderers.

Mean streets

I lost a good friend this week. John Bouma, the longtime managing partner of Snell and Wilmer and a towering figure among Phoenix lawyers, was struck and killed by two vehicles in the 7500 block of north Seventh Street. It was night. Maybe he strayed into the street to retrieve a lost item. The investigation is ongoing. He was first hit by a 2017 Toyota Tacoma, which apparently then threw him into the path of a 2017 Jeep Patriot.

Bouma and I had very different politics. But, brought together by the late Jack August, we enjoyed numerous lunches at Durant's talking about Phoenix history. He knew my mother, who worked closely with Mark Wilmer on Arizona v. California, the landmark suit that won Colorado River water. He could also name all the old bars, mob-ridden and otherwise, that once enlivened old Phoenix. As with Jack, I will miss him terribly.

When I posted this on Facebook, including a mention of Phoenix's deadly streets, I was surprised by the people who rushed to blame Bouma and say, essentially, "Nothing to see here, move along." Really? Your hair-trigger, defensive boosterism can't even acknowledge this reality? I shouldn't have been surprised. Social media is no less a cancer than the local-yokel sunny-championship golf denial.

In fact, Phoenix has a major problem with pedestrian injuries and fatalities. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, Arizona has the highest rate of pedestrian deaths in the nation.

The water fix

The Arizona media have been producing many process stories (e.g. this one) about the federal government's insistence that states agree on a plan to use less Colorado River water at this time of historic drought. Resistant farmers in Pinal County have come in for special criticism, including an intelligent piece by the Arizona Republic's Joanna Allhands about Pinal likely to increase its pumping of groundwater.

At the same time, the same media have engaged in their usual growthgasm stories about Arizona once again being one of the nation's fastest-growing states in population. Arizona held 7,171,646 souls as of this past July. In 1970, two years after the funding for the Central Arizona Project was signed into law, the state's population was 1.7 million.

Yet I have yet to see any story connect the two.

The disconnect is staggering, matched only by the inattention to climate change as a prime driver of the ongoing Southwestern drought.

Arizona's "plan" is to keep adding people, no matter what. The entire economy's foundation is based on continuing large increases in population. Not only that, but to continue doing so in single-family housing sprawl far from historic urban centers. The Real Estate Industrial Complex hopes for 300,000-plus people west of the White Tanks. A monstrous development near Benson would destroy the San Pedro River, the last major free-flowing stream in the Southwest.

Ten questions about light rail, answered

It's the tenth anniversary of the completion of metro Phoenix light rail (WBIYB). I'll have a history of the project in a special insert of the Arizona Capitol Times. In the meantime, some common questions and answers.

1. What decided the route of the starter line? It was a combination of demand, available right-of-way, and cost. The line follows the route of the old Red Line bus, which was at 125 percent of capacity by 2000. This ensured high ridership and a favorable outcome in federal funding (with an invaluable assist from the late Rep. Ed Pastor).

2. Why was it built at grade rather than as a subway or monorail? Cost. While both those modes — especially a subway — would have been preferable to street running, the funding was not available. The federal government once spent heavily for such subways as the D.C. Metro and Atlanta's MARTA (originally meant for Seattle), but that aid largely ended by the 1980s. Monorails also have the problem of controversy about being unsightly to some, although the Skytrain in Vancouver, B.C., part overhead and part subway, is highly successful.

3. Did Mesa almost miss out on light rail? Yes. The most conservative big city in America was especially wary of the project, and the starter line might have ended at McClintock Drive in Tempe. If so, it would have been very expensive to eventually build into Mesa. Mayor Keno Hawker played a leading role in securing city council approval of the line to Sycamore. This set the table for extending light rail deep into downtown Mesa under Mayor Scott Smith (now Valley Metro CEO). With Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa on board, this helped the metro area rise in the national competition for federal assistance.

Alleys and buses

KJZZ had a story about a pilot program unveiled at 15th Avenue and Butler Drive, making it "the first neighborhood to install gates to close their (sic) alleys to outsiders...designed to prevent criminal activity and illegal dumping."

It was spun as a "celebration," but it made me sad.

Alleys have a colorful history in early Phoenix. Many had names, such as Melinda's Alley and the vice-ridden Paris Alley downtown. As the Phoenix grew, so-called service alleys were part of the cityscape. Trash trucks used them as burly garbagemen heaved the contents of aluminum garbage cans into the back of the vehicles to be crushed and stored (in Scottsdale, it was the Refuse Wranglers). Utility crews employed the alleys for maintenance and meter-reading.

They were a delightful playground growing up in mid-century Phoenix. Alleys were the battlefield for our childhood conflicts: Flinging oranges, dirt clods, and, the highest escalation, rocks at each other. Secondary weapons included spears cut from oleanders. (Don't believe the nonsense about innocent children; of course, today we little boys being little boys would be diagnosed on a "spectrum" and heavily medicated).

I remember one battle where we were hunkered down in a makeshift fort as our opponents hurled rocks at us. One little boy named Harry kept running up within a few feet and throwing a stone into the fort. But I had a Wrist Rocket slingshot and after several close encounters with Harry, he came again, an angelic smile on his face — until I let go a decent-sized pebble into his chest at high velocity. I still feel a little guilty. But we won the rock fight.

Wealth and cities

In Seattle, I frequently encounter rich people whose family wealth can be traced back generations. Although they might be techies, bankers, lawyers, investors, or philanthropists, their great- or great-great grandparents made their fortunes from timber. It was the foundational extraction industry of the Pacific Northwest.

Timber and logging are now a small fraction of the region's economy, but they created the riches that would propel Seattle into becoming a world city. Most famous was Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a German immigrant who, with his partners, built a timber empire with help from the railroads. Although Weyerhauser's headquarters was in Tacoma for many years, then in the suburb of Federal Way, the company recently moved to Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, the better to attract top talent. William Boeing made his money from timber before founding the aerospace company that bears his name. And so it went.

Phoenix had its start in land extraction, too. First as an agricultural empire, then as a "migropolis," attracting millions of people to hundreds of square miles of subdivisions. But there the similarity ends. Phoenix never moved beyond the extraction industry of the land economy to become an economy based on value creation.

The consequences were on sharp display in the 2000s, when an effort was made to create a metropolitan arts council that would lobby for taxes to support culture. While the enterprise failed, it produced a remarkable study. That found that Phoenix ranked around 35th nationally in giving to the arts, despite Phoenix being the fifth most populous city and the 13th largest metro area. The same holds true for book markets. Phoenix is tough ground for writers. A new study found Arizona last in charitable giving.

The Suns arena dilemma

The rump City Council, with a caretaker mayor, seems in no hurry to address Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver's demands for a new or significantly remodeled downtown arena. Members are divided. Kate Gallego, facing Daniel Valenzuela in a March mayoral runoff, said, “it is not in Phoenix’s best interest to invest in an arena.” Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote, "taxpayers are about to get hosed if this deal goes through."

Here's the real deal: If Phoenix doesn't invest in the arena, Sarver — who has none of Jerry Colangelo's civic spirit — will move the team to the Rez, renaming it the Arizona Suns, no doubt, or even to Seattle, which is hungry to replace its lost Supersonics. The damage to downtown and light-rail (WBIYB) would be catastrophic. Talk about hosed.

Scholars are united in saying that professional sports arenas are bad public investments. But they are neither fans nor do they live in troubled cities. In an Atlantic magazine article, Rick Paulas writes, "Pro sports teams are bad business deals for cities, and yet, cities continue to fall for them. But municipalities can support local sports without selling out their citizens in the process." Indeed, it's outrageous that taxpayers are shelling out millions for super-rich team owners. They should say no. And this is especially true for robust, normal cities.

But Phoenix is neither.

November impressions

As I write, Kyrsten Sinema has pulled ahead of Martha McSally in the Senate race. Republicans are suing to stop counting of ballots that have already been cast. Similar shameful gambits are underway in Georgia and Florida. The Party of Lincoln Trump will do anything to hold power. This is authoritarianism, dear readers.

If Sinema holds on, and the rule of law survives the Ducey appointed state Supreme Court, it would be an astonishing accomplishment. Sinema would have an insurmountable lead of not for the wasted votes of the Greens. As long as the Nader-Jill Stein-Bernie Bro faction insists on its purity, the Republicans will keep winning. No revolution will come from the left. It's already come from the right and is succeeding quite nicely.

Before Democrats take control of the U.S. House in January, Trump and the Republicans are capable of anything. Make sure your seats are in their full upright position and your seatbelts fastened. The survival of the republic is at stake.

Other notes:

• November feels like late September and early October in old Phoenix. This is on track to be the hottest year in recorded Arizona history, yet the booster magical thinking continues about what climate change means for Arizona.

• As much as I'm happy about the infill of the Central Corridor, I'm sad to lose the special view from Third Street looking south to the mountains. This was especially enchanting passing through Alvarado, where much of the lush old oasis still prevails.

• I am baffled by "shade structures," which are little more than ribs of steel or other designs that provide little shade at all. Not smart in the skin-cancer capital of America. Old Phoenix was covered with shade trees, as well as businesses that had awnings and overhangs to protect from the sun.

• We are at the centennial of the Armistice than ended the Great War. Our world was made by that conflict and its aftermath. Phoenix, too: Demand for cotton caused farmers to switch wholesale to the crop, reducing the diversity of agriculture in the Salt River Valley. After the war, cotton prices crashed, with hard times here.

Now I'll leave the comments section as an election open thread.

 

 

 

 

 

The next Phoenix mayor

I know that I should have a firm conviction about the mayoral election, but I don't. We can ignore the Republican and Libertarian candidates — their dogmas are totally unsuited to the needs of the nation's fifth-largest city. That leaves Kate Gallego and Daniel Valenzuela.

Both are supported by people I respect. According to the Arizona Republic, Gallego's backers include former U.S. representatives Harry Mitchell, Sam Coppersmith, Ron Barber and Anne Kirkpatrick, as well as former state Attorney General and Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard. Valenzuela's big names include retired U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, former Phoenix mayors Paul Johnson, Skip Rimsza and Phil Gordon, councilwomen Laura Pastor and Debra Stark, and business leaders Jerry Colangelo and Sharon Harper.

That makes a choice tough. Gallego may get a tilt in her favor because she represented central Phoenix on City Council. But I'd be interested in what commenters say.

Neither Gallego nor Valenzuela were on the transformative City Council of the 2000s that helped land T-Gen and supported light rail (WBIYB), the downtown ASU campus, Phoenix Convention Center, Sheraton and other civic goods that led to today's downtown revival. 

Saving the mountains

Phoenix punches below its weight on almost category compared with its peers. But it has one amenity that places it above nearly every other big city: the mountain preserves and parks. They are a majestic and defining accomplishment.

The city has about 37,000 acres, or 58 square miles, of mountain preserves and parks. These range from South Mountain Park and Papago Park to the Phoenix Mountains Preserve and the Sonoran Preserve in far north Phoenix.

This also inspired suburbs, especially Scottsdale with its McDowell Sonoran Preserve. As I write, this is the subject of a big fight over Proposition 420, which would allow a tourist center — and potentially other development — to be built in this pristine land. Scottsdale preservationists are wise to be on guard. Phoenix's experience shows that saving the mountains didn't come easy — and is always at risk.

Preservation began with two federal initiatives. First was the Papago Saguaro National Monument, established by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 at the urging of Rep. Carl Hayden (Hayden actually wanted a National Park). Second came the Coolidge administration's sale of the 13,000 acres of the future South Mountain Park to the city in 1925, again with the urging of Hayden, by then a Senator. Phoenix paid $17,000 ($248,000 in today's money) for the ranges of what were then known as the Salt River Mountains and surrounding desert. 

Carolyn Warner, an appreciation

I still subscribe unfashionably to the Great Man and Great Woman school of history. But history also carries cruel contingencies. Carolyn Warner, who passed away Monday night at 88 was a towering figure who might have saved Arizona from the Kookocracy, saved Arizona from itself.

Instead, Democrats split the gubernatorial vote in 1986, giving us Evan Mecham, then Fife Symington, and, with the Big Sort bringing ever more right-wingers and the old stewards passing, the die was cast.

Along with her ex-husband Ron, Warner ran the furniture and interior design store that bore their name at 28th Street and Osborn. It was for years the fanciest furniture store in town. A native of Ardmore, Okla., she came to Arizona in 1953.

As Superintendent of Public Instruction for 12 years, Warner oversaw the last period of great public schools in Arizona, long before the shameful charter-school racket. Although a Democrat, she worked well with pragmatic Republicans such as Burton Barr, in an era of both bipartisan compromise and competition. 

Brains, trains, and automobiles

The biggest local story of the week is the unanimous (!) decision by the Rump City Council to raid funding intended for light-rail extension to Paradise Valley Mall and use it for street maintenance. As disheartening is that, as far as I know, neither major candidate for mayor has spoken out against it.

This comes soon after the Council (6-2) bucked an aggressive astroturf campaign by the Koch interests to kill that south Phoenix light-rail line (yes, the Wichita billionaires are deeply involved in destroying local transit). One step up and one step back. What's going on? A few observations:

The Council has changed from the consensus of the 2000s that brought some of the most constructive measures in decades. These include light rail (WBIYB), the downtown ASU campus, T-Gen and the downtown biomedical campus, and the new convention center. In recent years, the Council is less visionary and more divided — a situation made more difficult by the departure of Mayor Greg Stanton, and mayoral candidates Kate Gallego and Daniel Valenzuela.

Phoenix's size and means are wildly unbalanced. The Arizona Republic reported that city staff estimated that "4,085 of the city's 4,863 miles of streets will fall below a ‘good’ quality level in the next five years and require maintenance. Currently, 3,227 miles are already in fair, poor, or very poor condition. Bringing all of the streets up to a 'good' level in five years would cost $1.6 billion that the city does not have." 

'No hurricanes in Arizona!'

This piece of boosterism is not technically true — the state has been hit by the remnants of powerful Pacific hurricanes. Indeed, Arizona should take stock of Hurricane Florence and its effects in North Carolina. Let me explain.

Hurricanes are nothing new to the Carolinas. What is new is their severity, in part caused by climate change, combined with population growth and development.

Hurricane Florence was only a Category 1 storm when it made landfall, yet it caused historic levels of flooding. This came only a year after flooding damage caused by Hurricane Maria. In some cases, the very same areas saw severe flooding. Parts of South Carolina saw some damage, too.

North Carolina's population grew by more than 21 percent in the 1990s and nearly 19 percent in the 2000s. In 2017, it had more than 10.2 million people. South Carolina added more than 15 percent in those same decades.

A good part of that came in vulnerable coastal areas. For example, Wilmington's New Hanover County, an epicenter of Florence flooding, stood at 227,000 last year, more than double from its 1980 population. Horry County, S.C., another hurricane target, held more than 333,000 last year, more than three times its 1980 numbers. 

Ten years after

Newspapers are full of retrospectives on the Panic of 2008, the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession. Phoenix and Arizona were one of the ground zeros of the housing crash, the result being the worst recession here since the Great Depression.

True, its effects were buffered by the safety net of the hated Franklin Roosevelt, including the copious amounts of Social Security checks that kept coming from the hated federal government. Still, unemployment shot up to nearly 11 percent statewide by 2010, slightly less in Phoenix and Tucson. The main industry, housebuilding, had been shot in the head. Prices fell 50 percent in many cases. Recovery was much slower than peer metros.

A decade later, single-family building permits are back at early 1990s levels. Construction employment is not only not recovered from the 2000s bacchanal but far below historic trend. This would be good news for conservationists but for the fact that much of existing and planned construction involves suburban pods in bladed desert, farmland, or forest.

So let others discuss Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve, how close we came to a second Great Depression, the good and bad of the response and recovery. What's so striking in Phoenix is how little was changed by this tectonic event. 

Retiring in Arizona

Arizona is only the 29th "best state to retire in," according to a new survey by Bankrate. The consumer financial services company ranked cost of living, crime, culture, health-care quality, taxes, weather, and "well being." No 1? That would be South Dakota, followed by Utah, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Florida. The Grand Canyon State didn't even make the top 10 in weather.

If this is true, it's bad news for the retirement industry, which has been a lynchpin of the state's economy since Del Webb began Sun City in 1959. Social Security payments accounted for an astounding $1.4 trillion for nearly a million retirees in Arizona as of last year alone — not to mention the savings and other assets they bring from back home.

The survey is highly suspect, of course. South Dakota is a fascinating place, with Mount Rushmore and Deadwood, but between immense snowfall and isolation and being downwind from the ICBM fields of North Dakota should World War III erupt, it doesn't sound like the best place to spend one's sunset years.

Because of savage cuts that have destroyed 40 percent of newsroom jobs over the past decade, PR people now outnumber reporters by 5-1 or more. Every day at the Seattle Times, I get scores of pitches. Many are click bait such as this. I rely on more gold-standard information, such as that from the Federal Reserve, universities or authentic think tanks.

But that doesn't mean Arizona is quite out of the woods on retirement desirability. 

Why 'haboob' makes me stormy

Daniel Bryant photo

My friend, the talented Richard Ruelas, wrote a diligently argued article in the Arizona Republic explaining why some dust storms here should properly be called "haboobs." He cites a 1972 article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and its use by the popular weatherman Dewey Hopper, among others. It's hard to argue with Ruelas' conclusions — but the term still drives me crazy.

The original haboob is native to the Sahara Desert, a completely different environment than the Sonoran Desert (until climate change works its sinister magic in the decades ahead). They're heavy on sand, unlike our situation, and of even more massive proportions. And sure, monsoon, another Arabic-origin word, has use worldwide and is a longstanding expression for the rainy season in Arizona.

Still, nobody besides Hopper used haboob when I was growing up. My grandmother, with memories back to the 1890s, never used it. These were called dust storms, a classic of the Old West. They weren't haboobs. They were dust storms. The phenomenon is especially prevalent in the Gila River basin between Phoenix and Tucson. When Interstate 10 was completed, the state installed a system of signs to alert drivers to an impending dust storm.

What makes me come off sounding like Gampa Simpson is that the widespread use of haboob seems like another out-of-town imposition on Phoenix. The city has lost so, so much of what made it unique and magical in all the world, why more? The influx of millions of newcomers left us with people who don't even know the location of downtown, fools who hike the mountains in high summer, often with fatal results. Sprawl has destroyed our citrus groves and farms, torn apart the civic fabric, left the enchanting Japanese flower gardens under miles of schlock development. The oasis has been paved over, with gravel and skeleton trees and a few heat-stressed plants dying amid the output of the Arizona Rock Products Association. People don't even realize what's been needlessly lost in this frenzy of vandalism. (Ruelas, a careful and fair journalist, is a Tempe native).

In this Phoenix, knowledge of history and customs is not merely ignored but scorned by too many. "Home" is where they came from. They only love Phoenix when they get defensive about any valid criticism of the place. There's not even consensus on what to call this sunscape. So instead of the magnificent and distinctive Phoenix, we get "the Valley." This even though there's Silicon Valley, the San Fernando Valley, the Red River Valley (of the North and of the South), and the Valley of the Jolly (Ho-Ho-Ho) Green Giant. Way to position yourself in the global economy. 

Mayors you should know

With Councilwoman Thelda Williams being a placeholder (for the second time) until a new Phoenix mayor is elected in November, it's a good time to reflect on her predecessors. Here is my admittedly subjective list of the most consequential:

John Alsap was Phoenix's first mayor, serving for a year in 1881 after incorporation. Dying five years later, age 56, Alsap, left, nevertheless compiled impressive accomplishments in the Territory. Kentucky born, Indiana raised, and a physician by training, he came to Prescott as a prospector and saloon operator. He began farming in the Salt River Valley in 1869 and was one of three commissioners who established the Phoenix townsite. In the territorial Legislature, he led the successful effort to create a new county — Maricopa — out of Yavapai County. He's buried in the old Pioneer Cemetery (now the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park, although its historic grass was removed).

Emil Ganz was the young town's first Jewish mayor and a two-term chief, serving from 1885-86 and 1899-1901. Ganz was born in Germany, emigrated to America and training as a tailor, seeing heavy action in the Civil War on the Confederate side, and moving to Phoenix in 1879. He ran the Bank Exchange Hotel, the town's first substantial hostelry. As mayor he pushed to establish a fire department and improve the water supply (his hotel burned in 1885 and the town was hit by a severe blaze a year later). 

Kooks and Kochs try to derail south Phoenix light rail

It appears that the six mile light-rail line to south Phoenix is on life support. I say "appears" because much of the reporting on the issue has been inaccurate. The Arizona Republic's Jessica Boehm reported the immediate news correctly, but plenty still needs to be filled in.

If I understand correctly, the City Council — with transit-backers Mayor Greg Stanton gone and Councilmembers Kate Gallego and Daniel Valenzuela set to resign in August to run for the seat — voted to "redesign" the south line along Central Avenue. This is to address a "grassroots" opposition complaining that Central would lose two of four lanes for automobile traffic.

Redesign may well mean death and loss of federal funding, especially with the rump Council after August. Skillful/shameful maneuvering by Councilman Sal DiCiccio, an ardent light-rail opponent, even took hostage City Manager Ed Zuercher, threatening his job and the city budget. This is the shorthand to a very complex moving drama.

It's no secret that the Koch brothers and other dark money groups are working to kill transit projects around the country. The anti-rail fetish on the right has always puzzled me. The "You Bastards" part of WBIYB is intended for them and their thuggish opposition to the starter line. And it's always possible to find a few discontents for a "grassroots" front group. But south Phoenix voters approved this line by 70 percent. If the likes of Better Call Sal prevail, this would be a blunder of historic proportions. For the facts and context, please read on. 

Ten and no change

A decade ago, Arizona and metropolitan Phoenix became an epicenter of the Great Recession, brought on by Wall Street hustles and Sun Belt overbuilding. Statewide unemployment reached a high of 10.9 percent, slightly less in Phoenix and Tucson. The speculative real-estate economy, which had become the economy, collapsed. House prices fell 50 percent or more, with historic levels of foreclosures or people being underwater on their mortgages. For many, this meant financial ruin. The overall damage was far worse than 1990 and both the state and metro area trailed their peers by years in recovering. Even now, the number of construction workers is at 1999 levels, even though population has grown considerably.

Ten years later, what's most remarkable is how little has changed. The one exception is real progress with central Phoenix infill, but it's a smidgen of the overall situation.

Sprawl development-driven economy? Check. Dependence on lower-skilled, lower-paid back office jobs? Check. The economic center in the car-dependent office "parks" of the East Valley? Check. Poorly-funded schools, more Big Sort Republican newcomers, Kooks in control of state government? Check, check, and check. Phoenix is the only major metropolitan area in North America that's building extensive new freeways, including the corruption-ridden South Mountain loop.

In other words, the vulnerabilities that drove Phoenix into a ditch a decade ago have been sustained and reinforced. No lessons learned. Nothing to see here, it's sunny with championship golf, so buy a tract house or move along. As Talleyrand said of the Bourbon dynasty, "They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing." 

Phoenix 101: Canals

Beneath all the concrete, asphalt, and gravel of today's metropolitan Phoenix is some of the richest soil on earth. No wonder early settlers called it the Nile River Valley of the United States, or, with more aching pathos given what's happened, American Eden. Add water and anything will grow here. Getting the water from the Salt River was the challenge — one solved with canals.

The Hohokam (750-1450 AD) built at least 500 miles of canals in the Salt River Valley. The mileage might have been in the thousands. They created the most advanced irrigation civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas.

The genius of Jack Swilling — Confederate deserter, Indian fighter, prospector, drunk, opium addict, brawler, first town postmaster and justice of the peace, adoptive father of an Apache boy, cherished friend of many — was that he understood the significance of the Hohokam canals, which laid dormant for more than 400 years. They were not mere prehistoric curiosities. They were the means of building a modern empire, where a new civilization would arise from the ashes of its predecessor. (Why would you use the amorphous word "Valley" when you have the magical and appropriate name: Phoenix). 

Filling in

In the 2000s boom, central Phoenix saw many proposals and promises — including 60-story towers in Midtown — but hardly any private development happened. It took years of heavy lifting to get WilloWalk/Tapestry and One Lexington. Finally, even though the local economy has yet to fully recover from the Great Recession, the central core is seeing major infill. One prime example is Lennar's Muse apartments, built on the long dormant empty lot at the northwest corner of Central and McDowell, once home to AT&T's offices.

Just south, and also near the light-rail (WBIYB) station is a massive apartment complex under way near the Burton Barr Central Library. The north side of Portland Park has a tall condo building. More apartments are complete around Roosevelt and Third Street, while a crane hovers over the former site of Circles Records, erecting Empire Group's 19-story apartments. South of One Lexington, the long construction of the Edison condos is nearing completion.

This is transit-oriented development and it's finally happening.

An aside: Why does the announcement on trains say, "McDowell and Central, cultural district" instead of "Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix Central Library," and "Roosevelt and Central, arts district" instead of "Roosevelt Row arts district"? 

What is Grand Canyon University?

The university is one of the foundations of liberal Western Civilization. The concept of academic freedom originated at the University of Bologna in 1158. The University of Paris and University of Oxford were among the earliest institutions of higher learning. In America, Harvard was established in 1636. The United States typically had three types: private, church originated (the University of Southern California was affiliated with the Methodist Church), and those established by states. A very different Republican Party passed legislation in the 19th century for land-grant colleges and universities.

This landscape existed through most of American history. In addition, states created normal schools to train teachers — most became universities, the most notable being Arizona State University. Many also created institutions of higher learning for African-Americans. Beyond this, communities had junior colleges — Phoenix College was founded in 1920 — which morphed into community colleges. And entrepreneurs set up business schools or "colleges" to teach such basic skills as typing and bookkeeping. But this latter operation was a trade school, not a university.

When I was young, Grand Canyon College was a small liberal-arts Southern Baptist institution. It was the only other four-year or higher institution in metropolitan Phoenix besides ASU. Phoenix is by far the largest American city with so few real colleges and universities. This is a major drag on the metro's intellectual, research, and talent-attracting life. One cause is that Phoenix came of age after the era when wealthy patrons established universities (E.g. the University of Chicago, backed by John D. Rockefeller in 1890). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bought land for a Brigham Young University in Phoenix in the 1960s but it was never built.

Now the Baptist affiliation is long gone and we have Grand Canyon University. But, as a former editor of mine was fond of saying, what does that mean? 

The stand

John Loredo photo

I'm the beneficiary of Arizona public schools. At Kenilworth in the 1960s, we never suffered textbooks falling apart or holes in the ceiling. No, this elementary school whose alumni included Barry Goldwater, Paul Fannin, and Margaret Hance, which was integrated and taught everyone from poor kids to the scions of the Palmcroft elite, had superb teachers. It had a library and a verdant playing fields — the monstrous freeway only a line on a planning map — presided over by a magnificent, inspiring building.

At Coronado High School in middle-class Scottsdale, the story was much the same. Some of the finest teachers anywhere, one of the top fine-arts departments in the country, and Ralph Haver's inspired mid-century architecture. None of my teachers at either school were forced to buy supplies. Neither school was surrounded by a prison-like fence — and the '60s and '70s were hardly peaceful decades. There was even a brief teachers' strike in Scottsdale in 1971.

Now a statewide walkout is occurring. It is about much more than some of the lowest teacher pay in the nation. More even than gutting a billion dollars from public schools while dolling out tax cuts to the wealthy and politically connected. More than teachers seeing through Gov. Doug Ducey's cynical promise to raise wages 20 percent — something that wouldn't even bring their pay to the national average, and would require the Legislature to take money from other critical needs. Because...tax cuts. Taxes must always be cut.

Teachers have finally made a stand.

I have no idea whether it will be successful. I doubt it can change Arizona's trajectory. But the stand needs to be made. 

Where to go in my Phoenix

Readers frequently tell me where to go, so it's my time to return the favor. Seriously, I get so many requests for restaurant and sights to visit from out-of-towners, especially Seattleites visiting for Mariners Spring Training. It will be easier to put it in a column and direct them here.

My suggestions don't focus on north Scottsdale or the asteroid belt of supersuburbs. Instead, I send them to my Phoenix, a vanishing place to be sure.

Restaurants:

Durant's: The legendary steakhouse, on the light-rail line in Midtown. If you drive, you can enter through the kitchen like a made man, as Jack Durant intended. The interior (above) is a 1950s throwback, the food is excellent, and the service is classy. Durant's features prominently in my David Mapstone Mysteries. Be sure to try a martini.

Also on light rail (WBIYB) and not to be missed: Fez, Forno 301, Switch, Lenny's Burgers, Wild Thaiger, Honey Bear's BBQ, and Macayo's.

Chef-driven Mexican food is big now, a trend started with Barrio Cafe. But I still love throw-down authentic Sonoran cuisine. My new fave, especially since Macayo changed its menu, is La Piñata on north Seventh Avenue, where Mary Coyle's used to be. Also be sure to check out the taco trucks you'll find all over. My enduring love is Los Olivos in Old Scottsdale, which has been there since before I was born.

Other favorites: The Persian Garden across from Phoenix College. Downtown, don't miss the historic Sing High Cafe on Madison Street, which once operated in the Deuce. The best pizza is Cibo at Fifth Avenue and Fillmore.

For fancy old Phoenix resort dining, I suggest Lon's at the Hermosa, T-Cook's at the Royal Palms, and any of the restaurants at the Arizona Biltmore.

You can breakfast like David, Lindsey, and Peralta at the First Watch at Park Central. The Farm at South Mountain offers a fine breakfast (as well as lunch and dinner). You can get a taste of the Eden that was once my hometown. 

'Do I return to my home state?'

I received a very articulate note from a young man who left to attend a well-regarded Midwestern university. He wrote in part:

I  lived in Phoenix my entire life, until I left ... to study environmental engineering. I was going to learn as much as I could about the ecological problems facing Arizona, especially the inevitable water shortages that come from placing millions of people in the middle of the desert in an era of rapidly changing and warming climate, and then triumphantly return and solve them. At least, that was my naïve goal at 17 years old. 

Now, I’m about to graduate, and I see myself at a crossroads, as one often does at this age of relative innocence. Do I return to my home state and try to make it a better place, or do I abandon it for a better place?

This is what I wrote back:

Thank you for your heartfelt and compelling note. The answer, I'm sorry to say, is don't come back.

 

Of course, many factors come into play. Whether you want to be near family or thirst for endless sunshine, for example. But your idealism would be ground to dust by the reality that is Phoenix and Arizona. You might be able to get a job helping developers get around environmental regulations. Or, for a pittance, working for one of the few environmental advocacy groups.

 

But you can't change the place. It's a lesson I and so many others have learned. Phoenix breaks hearts. There is the illusion of the blank slate — I've watched so many architects, academics, artists and designers come there with this sense. In a few years, they leave in frustration.

 

Life is short. I was your age just yesterday, or so it seems. Your talents and training could be more rewardingly applied in a place that has an environmental ethic and has livability high on its agenda. And there are so many wonderful cities in America for a young person to grow, encounter new ideas, thrive. Alas, that's not our home state. I wish you the best.

 Allow me to explain further. 

When a light goes out

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” — John Steinbeck

I was baptized in Central Methodist Church, so many decades ago. I remember Sunday school, attending services with my mother and grandmother. My mother had a glorious contralto and, a child prodigy trained as a concert pianist, sometimes played the immense pipe organ, with its 4 divisions, 28 stops, and 41 registers. In the 1960s, it was common for each service to see a thousand people or more, filling the sanctuary and its three balconies. Central was a prime posting for veteran ministers — only doctors of divinity reached the senior rank — and the choir was superb. I was confirmed there, age 13.

When I returned to Phoenix in 2000, I started attending Central again, this time with Susan. Getting a hundred people in the pews was a victory by that time. The quality of preaching was uneven, as individual ministers came and went (long gone from the days of a senior minister and others). But the music program was very strong under Don Morse. The core, including the corps of ushers, was committed. Important for us, Central still offered a traditional service, with the wonderful Methodist hymns. Christmas Eve could see five services in the soaring sanctuary, with luminarias in the courtyard. We continue to attend. When I lived in Charlotte, people would ask me if I had found "a church home." No — in that hotbed of religion, the question irritated the secular me. "I have a bar home," I would respond. But the truth was different. My church was here. It always was. Always will be.

But this year brought heartbreaking news. First, the music program was downgraded, with Morse and seemingly most of the choir gone. Finances were an issue; the church and Morse, who had already taken a pay freeze/cut, couldn't come to terms. But respect also seemed an issue, the lay leaders wanting to downgrade his position to "choirmaster." A botched remodel of the sanctuary was probably another cause, including the loss of the pipe organ and removal of two of the balconies. I don't claim special insight. I spent many years in United Methodist choirs, but tried to avoid church politics whenever possible. Next came word that the sanctuary would only be used for special occasions. A traditional service would be held in the small Pioneer Chapel and a contemporary one in Kendall Hall.

Arizona's 'boom' (in charts)

To hear the boosters tell it, Arizona is enjoying one of the most competitive economies in the nation. Let's take a look, using authoritative sources.

Median household adjusted for inflation income is up, with its second-best showing since 2000. Unfortunately, it trails the national average and peer competitors in the West:

The workforce is at a record near 2.8 million. Unfortunately growth has been sluggish, along with the national average. It is well below the level of growth for this point of an expansion compared with previous cycles:

Population growth, the holy grail of the state's economy is at its lowest levels since the Great Depression, even as Arizona passed 7 million people.

 

'Another Los Angeles'

It surprised me to still hear Phoenicians say, "We're becoming another Los Angeles" or "We don't want to become another LA." This vox local yokel reminds me that people in Phoenix don't get out much. To be fair, I used to think the same thing. That was until I was 10 years old, when my mother took me to the City of Angels on Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited, and we arrived at LA Union Passenger Terminal (above). I had never seen a building so grand — and the rest of the city was just as stunning. This was the first big city I'd been in, and it was nothing like little Phoenix.

I judge a city by its trains. Union Station has been restored to its grandeur and actually hosts more arrivals and departures than when it opened in 1939. In addition to Amtrak intercity trains to Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, and Seattle, it is the hub for LA Metrolink's six commuter rail lines, plus three subway and light-rail lines. All around it, downtown LA is undergoing a stunning renaissance — not only with new buildings such as the 1,099-foot Wilshire Grand but rehabbing its stock of majestic architecture from the early 20th century. It was never true that Los Angeles "didn't have a downtown." It had several, including Century City, Westwood, Hollywood, and downtown proper. All of them leave Phoenix looking like Hooterville by comparison. LA made a terrible mistake in tearing out the extensive Pacific Electric Railway, but it's making amends fast.

Phoenix becoming another Los Angeles? It should be so lucky. LA is one of America's three world cities, as defined by sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod's famous book of the same name. The influential Globalization and World Cities Network ranks it as an Alpha city, the third highest level of global power (only New York is Alpha ++ among North American cities). Phoenix is gamma, the ninth category. Phoenix peers Denver, Seattle, and San Diego rank Beta-minus. The LA metropolitan area's gross domestic product totaled more than $931 billion in 2017, second only to New York City in inflation-adjusted dollars. Phoenix, although the nation's fifth-largest city and 13th most populous metro ranked 17th, at $220 billion (again, behind peer metros). If LA were a nation, its output would rival Australia.

 

Lessons from Denver

One went to Denver and the other went wrong

— American folk ballad.

Last fall, we took the train from Seattle to my favorite adopted hometown, Denver. This form of travel is worth the trip — vacation begins when you settle into your seat. Arriving in Denver, I found the city much changed from when I lived here in the 1990s, working for the Rocky Mountain News, and all for the better. Getting off the California Zephyr, the restored Union Station greeted us. Not only is it the hub for Amtrak, but also for the light- and heavy-rail trains on the 122-mile network funded by the 2004 FasTracks referendum. Light rail preceded FasTracks, with the first line from downtown to suburban Littleton opening in 1994. As in Dallas, once people saw how light rail worked, everybody wanted it. Now an electric-powered commuter line also connects to Denver International Airport, along with six light-rail lines and more coming.

Union Station, which recently underwent a $200 million renovation, is breathtaking. The exterior, with its iconic "Travel by Train" neon sign, is cleaned up and the center of vast amounts of mixed-use development. Inside, the once grimy waiting room, has been opened up into a wifi-equipped common area surrounded by shops and restaurants. We stayed at the Crawford Hotel in the station, named after the pioneering downtown developer Dana Crawford. It's a miraculous makeover from when I was among a small number of downtown residents and I would ride my bicycle around the deserted railyard behind the depot. Union Station is the anchor of Lower Downtown, or LoDo, where imposing warehouses from the 19th and early 20th centuries were renovated into lofts, offices, and restaurants. An early brewpub was started here by John Hickenlooper, who went on to become Denver mayor and Colorado governor.

It was a near-run thing. Although preservationists led by Crawford scored a win by saving Larimer Square in the 1960s as a tourist destination, many people were prepared to tear down the majestic but obsolete warehouses of LoDo. Only thanks to mayors Federico "Imagine a Great City" Peña and Wellington Webb, along with developers such as Crawford who had the skills to save and rehabilitate old buildings, was LoDo saved. Railyards made redundant by mergers were turned into a campus for Metropolitan State University, the Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado at Denver. LoDo and nearby areas also attracted Coors Field of the Colorado Rockies and the Pepsi Center where the NBA Denver Nuggets and NHL Colorado Avalanche play. What was mostly abandoned railroad property when I first arrived has been completely rebuilt and knitted into the city.

It's no surprise that Denver is among the 20 finalist cities for Amazon's HQ2, with 50,000 high-paid jobs and $5 billion investment. Denver is a comer, win or lose.

 

Distressed Arizona

It's tough all over. Well, not really.

In the latest Distressed Communities report, which digs down to the ZIP Code level nationally, Gilbert ranks as the least distressed among America's 100 largest cities. It has zero distressed ZIP codes and 99 percent of them are considered "prosperous." The report, by the Economic Innovation Group, considers seven metrics to rank areas "distressed," "at risk," mid-tier," "comfortable," and "prosperous." It's become one of the gold-standard reports as America struggles with sharply different economic and social outcomes.

Chandler also did very well, No. 4 nationally, with zero distressed and 65 percent prosperous ZIP codes. Scottsdale ranked No. 10, again with zero distressed and 61 percent prosperous. These showings are no mystery. All three jurisdictions are overwhelmingly higher-income Anglos, along with the preponderance of the state's high-end economic assets. (Someone once sniffed that he lived in south Chandler, as if this would impress me. My Chandler is circa 1977 and south Chandler is alfalfa fields.). Scottsdale has plenty of extremely rich retirees and part-year residents. Gilbert, and to a lesser extent Chandler, also benefits from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yet Tucson ranks a shocking 91 out of 100. Nearly 59 percent of the city's ZIP codes are distressed and less than 8 percent are prosperous. This is the kind of calamity more likely seen in famously troubled places — and indeed the other bottom 10 include Detroit, Buffalo, and Newark. 

Phoenix 101: the nineties

The new decade came upon a Phoenix beset with crisis. Charlie Keating, the most lionized Arizona businessman of the previous dozen years, was facing federal fraud and racketeering charges. His palatial Phoenician Resort was seized by a platoon of U.S. Marshals, lawyers, regulators, and locksmiths in November 1989. American Continental Corp., flagship of Keating's complex web of businesses, was forced into Chapter 11 reorganization. Among the casualties was his ambitious Estrella Ranch project south of tiny Goodyear.

Behind much of the trouble was the savings and loan scandal and collapse, a financial crisis that cost taxpayers about $132 billion. It also took down some of the Sun Belt's biggest institutions, including Phoenix's venerable Western Savings, controlled by the Driggs family, and Merabank, a subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp. meant to make big bucks for the holding company of Arizona Public Service. It would take the federal Resolution Trust Corp. years to sort out and dispose of all the properties and hustles. The worst of the S&L wrongdoing was the Keating Five scandal. Its U.S. Senator members, who leaned on regulators on behalf of Keating, included Arizona's Dennis DeConcini and John McCain (Disclosure: John Dougherty and I were the first to break this story at the Dayton Daily News).

The local trouble had been predicted in a December 1988, Barron's article about Phoenix's overheated real-estate market, fueled by S&L money. The headline: "Phoenix Descending: Is Boomtown USA Going Bust?" The boosters had been outraged. Barron's had been right. In an ominous foreshadowing of the future, the city hit a record 122 degrees on June 26, 1990.

For individuals, the worst was yet to come. Unemployment in Arizona rose from 5.3 percent in May 1990 to a peak of 7.8 percent in March 1992. This seems modest compared with the Great Recession (11.2 percent for the state); it was painful enough. State and city leaders committed to establishing a more diverse economy, weaning Arizona off its dependency on population growth and real estate. Economic development organizations were set up across the state for this purpose, including the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, led by the brilliant Ioanna Morfessis. It established goals to build strategic clusters around high-technology sectors with high-paying jobs.

Tragically, the effort failed. The 1990s, when the U.S. economy enjoyed its longest, strongest, most innovative economic expansion in history, saw Phoenix and Arizona double down on "growth." The state's population grew by a staggering 40 percent, 45 percent for metropolitan Phoenix. The cluster strategy lacked sustained focus. Yet none of this was obvious or inevitable as the decade began. 

Phoenix's lost gems

We spend much time on this site discussing urbanism, including the architectural losses and disasters of Phoenix. More than history or sentimentality is at stake. Much of the economic power in cities such as Seattle, Denver and even Los Angeles has come from the "back to the city" movement and restored historic masterpieces.

Phoenix was smaller and poorer at the zenith of Art Deco. But it did have a real cityscape before the post-World War II automobile era, subsidized sprawl, and municipal malpractice of massive teardowns created today's suburbanized mess. It had some saves, including the Orpheum Theater, Orpheum Lofts, San Carlos Hotel, Luhrs Tower and Luhrs Building, old Post Office, Kenilworth School and the County Courthouse/City Hall.

Thanks to Rob Spindler and the ASU archives, along with the collecting by the indefatigable Brad Hall, we're getting more photographs of the old city. I realize some of this is familiar  territory for regular readers, but the images tell more than words about what Phoenix lost (click for a larger image). They include:

The Fox Theater:

 

Regrets? I have a few...

In 1999-2000, I was offered the business editor jobs at the San Diego and San Francisco papers. I also had feelers about coming to work at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. After nearly five years at Knight-Ridder's Pulitzer-winning Charlotte Observer, I was more than ready to leave a city where they ask if you've found a "church home," wanted to get back to the West. That was when John D'Anna at the Arizona Republic called and offered me a columnist job at my hometown newspaper.

Warning signs abounded: Downtown Phoenix was dead, corporate Arizona had moved out to north Scottsdale, and the Republic had recently been purchased by Gannett, known for its small newspaper mentality, suspicion of serious journalism, and obsession with fads (I had worked for the company as assistant managing editor for business news at the Cincinnati Enquirer and saw its bad and OK sides). On the other hand, downtowns were making impressive comebacks elsewhere — I had seen them first-hand in Denver and even Charlotte. Brahm Resnik, the business editor at the Republic, assured me the changes had been minimal. After years as a turnaround specialist editor, I longed to be out of management. And every journalist's dream is to write a column in his hometown.

So I took the job, following in the footsteps of the fine business columnist Naaman Nickell.

Susan and I bought one of the most beautiful historic houses in Phoenix, in Willo a block from where I grew up. And for the next nearly seven years I wrote one of the most popular columns in the paper. "Never thought I would read this in the Arizona Republic," was a common reader accolade. I enjoyed a position of prominence, leadership, and celebrity totally out of proportion with the job — at least in other cities. The parties we hosted at the 1914 bungalow on Holly Street attracted a who's who of Arizona. And then, in 2007, it was gone. We had to sell that beloved house as no other local jobs materialized and make our primary base in Seattle (we still have a Midtown condo and some lifelong friends).

Could I have found a way to stay?

Hollering past the graveyard

I get it that the "journalism" practiced by business journals is supposed to be celebratory and "positive." That it lacks the rigor, context, experience, and skepticism required by real journalism. So I hesitate to do a beat-down. But a story in the Phoenix Business Journal requires some pushback.

The headline is: "Does Arizona's Heat, Climate Change Hurt Business Attraction?" (pro tip: Don't write heds that end in question marks — you're the journalists, why are you asking me, the reader). And the bulk of the story goes on to say, no. Everything's fine!

Some lowlights:

Economic developers who work to bring businesses and jobs to the state and Phoenix region contend the desert heat doesn’t work against them in site selections.

They also say climate change doesn’t come up at all.

Instead, they tout the narrative of Arizona’s lack of natural disasters in appealing to data centers, back-office operations and other businesses concerned about potential disruptions.

 

Phoenix 101: The great stores

Phoenix was too small and too poor to have the grand department stores that graced mostly eastern cities. But it had some beloved stores, nonetheless. They were part of a dense, walkable downtown business district that also included scores of specialty shops, as well as national chain department stores. Here are a few of the most prominent locals: 

Goldwater's: Born in Russian Poland, Michel Goldwasser traveled to Paris, then London, changing his name to Michael Goldwater and becoming a successful tailor. In 1852, "Big Mike" and his brother Joe set off for San Francisco. He eventually ended up in the mining town of Gila City, Arizona Territory., in Yuma County. He mostly worked as a peddler. After many ups, downs and wanderings, the brothers opened a store in Phoenix in 1872. It closed only three years later and the brothers focused on their store in the territorial capital of Prescott. Big Mike's son Morris was manager and the enduring slogan "The best always" was born. Morris, a Democrat, was also elected Prescott mayor.

A store returned to Phoenix in 1896, thanks to the pushing of Big Mike's younger son, Baron. As a Washington Post story said, "The Phoenix store offered not only reliable merchandise at low prices but the latest fashions from New York and Europe. Baron decided that pleasing the ladies was the way to economic success. Once he had the new store running smoothly, Baron became active in the civic life of his adopted town.

"He was soon elected a director of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and saw the Sisters' Hospital (now St. Joseph's) through some financial difficulties. He helped establish the Phoenix Country Club, the Arizona Club and was a founder of the Valley National Bank. In his late thirties, still trim and good-looking, Baron became the town's most eligible bachelor. His parents hoped that all their children would marry in the Jewish faith, but Mike's death in 1903 followed by Sarah's death in 1905 allowed them to marry whomever they wished." Baron married Episcopalian Josephine Williams, on January 1, 1907. Barry Morris Goldwater was born two years later.

Goldwater's soon became the swankiest department store in Phoenix. For decades it was located on First Street between Washington and Adams streets in the Dorris-Heyman Building. It moved to Park Central Shopping Center, two miles north, in the late 1950s. Above is a photo from a Goldwater's display window in the 1940s, from the McCulloch Brothers collection of the ASU archives. Goldwater's eventually grew to nine stores, including locations in Scottsdale, Tucson, Las Vegas and Albuquerque. The family sold it to Associated Dry Goods in 1963, but that didn't stop Barry from being pilloried as a "department store heir" in the following year's presidential election. In a famous Herblock cartoon, Barry towers over a poor family huddled in a doorway. "If you had any initiative, you'd go out and inherit a department store," he says. The Goldwater's name endured until the late 1980s.

Diamond's: Jewish immigrants Nathan and Isaac Diamond founded this Phoenix icon as the Boston Store in 1897. A big draw in 1931 was the installation of air conditioning. It wasn't renamed until 1947. Located at Second Street and Washington, the store featured women's and men's clothing, shoes, outerwear, housewares, and much more. It, too, made the move to Park Central in 1957, with a 200,000 square foot store. Other locations followed, including Thomas Mall, Tri-City Mall, Scottsdale Fashion Square, and Metrocenter. The Diamond family were among the founders of the Phoenix Symphony. The chain was sold to Dayton-Hudson, then Dillard's.

Phoenix Confidential: OCB

The Organized Crime Bureau of the Phoenix Police Department was created in the 1974 when Chief Larry Wetzel sent Detective Sgt, Oscar Long to clean up the old Intelligence Bureau, full of place-holders and shady types compromised by the mob. His goal: Replace the old "subversive surveillance squad" with top investigating officers to dig into organized and white collar crime for prosecution purposes. The old squad just gathered names to put in the intelligence files. The new one intended to put made men and corrupt pols on the defensive in one of America's gangland playgrounds. Lt. Glenn Sparks requested a federal grant to fund the OCB and it was approved in a very short time.

OCB attracted some of the most gifted detectives and supervisors in the department, indeed in the nation, including Long, Sparks, Lonzo McCracken, Jim Kidd, Cal Lash and A.J. Edmondson. I leave out some names at the request of the detectives — safety is still an issue. Over the next several decades, the OCB was involved in the most important investigations in the state, from the murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles to corruption of high city officials and the depredations of the New Mexican Mafia (New Eme). Lash went on to serve as Administrative Sergeant for two police chiefs.

In a city where, as the blurb for my new novel goes, "gangsters rubbed elbows with the city’s elite amid crosscurrents of corrupt cops, political payoffs, gambling, prostitution, and murder cloaked by the sunshine of a resort city," the Organized Crime Bureau was Phoenix's Untouchables. And this was real, not fiction.

'Smart city'

I see that the local-yokel boosters bamboozled Popular Mechanics into doing a story claiming that Bill Gates wants to build a "smart city" in the Phoenix exurbs. This lacks any corroborating evidence, any skeptical journalism. It is, as the old newsroom joke goes, a story too good to check. What we do know is that Gates' investment arm plinked down $80 million for a stake in the speculative "master planned community" called Belmont. The promoters want to built 80,000 tract houses, along with industrial, office, and retail space.

The whole thing strikes me as dodgy. Water availability, especially in the long-term, is one of the two biggest issues facing Phoenix. A game of musical chairs is being played thanks to the complexity and opaqueness of Arizona's water law and enforcement. But the outlook is not good. The metro area and state are past population overshoot, especially for the one-trick-pony of building single-family detached tract houses in an ever-widening footprint of sprawl. The other unpleasant reality is climate change, which bodes very ill for the state. More sprawl destroys the unique, lovely Sonoran Desert.

The ghost of Ned Warren is looking on the spectacle of taking $80 million in Bill Gates' chump change with envy. As I wrote in a Seattle Times column, being one of the world's cleverest men in one field — bringing enormous riches — does not make you smart in everything else. Maybe he'll make a quick buck if the project is ever built. The suckers left holding the bag won't be so fortunate.

Similar sad hilarity came from a New York Times Magazine piece about Doug Ducey making Arizona the capital of self-driving cars. No regulations, come on down! The problem is that the companies will neither have their well-paid design and engineering jobs nor make the vehicles here. They will merely use our abundant freeways and wide streets to experiment. What could go wrong? 

Bruno

Everyone who was blessed to know Alan Brunacini, who passed away in October at age 80, has a Bruno story. I'll tell two about Phoenix's long-serving Fire Chief.

At the 2005 going-away party for Sheryl Sculley, the deputy city manager who was leaving for the top job in San Antonio, I was talking to Bruno when a man walked up. He was a promoter on the make and wanted me to write about his project. I stepped a quarter turn and said, "Do you know Alan Brunacini?" The guy instantly (thought he) assessed the short, unprepossessing man in the Hawaiian shirt, said, "Howya doin', Alan," and rudely turned to face to me.

I thought: You just turned your back on the most powerful man in the city of Phoenix. Needless to say, his project never happened. His lack of discernment about Bruno was a tell. On the other hand, Bruno was accustomed to such reactions from those not in the know. "Most people think Bob Khan is the fire chief," he told me once with a broad grin, speaking of his ubiquitous public affairs officer (and successor). Bruno had little ego in the game. I suspect he also understood the advantage in being underestimated, especially in the perilous landscape of municipal politics. 

Years later, after he retired and I left the Republic, Bruno and I were enjoying one of our periodic meet-ups in the shady inner courtyard of Fair Trade coffee. A gifted raconteur, he told me about a pivotal moment in his early career.

Assessing Greg Stanton

Now that he's announced he will resign as Phoenix mayor to run for Congress, it's not too early to at least make a preliminary evaluation of Greg Stanton's tenure.

Whether they like it not, all Phoenix mayors since the mid-1980s have been judged on what we could call the Goddard Scale. Terry Goddard was a transformational Phoenix leader who swept away the last of the Charter-Margaret Hance status quo, led the change to a district system of council representation, saved the historic districts, and began to salvage downtown. He was bold! He was visionary! He got cities and had a clear-eyed view of Phoenix's situation!

And this is actually true. But even Terry Goddard wasn't Terry Goddard at first, or how he would mature as a leader and urban thinker after he left office (it was a terrible loss for Arizona that he didn't become governor). So on the Goddard scale, even Terry wasn't a 10. Let's say 9.1. Give Paul Johnson a 6.5 — Goddard was a hard act to follow, and Johnson faced the worst recession in decades here, up to that point. Skip Rimsza, who served from 1994 to 2004, gets a solid 8 in my book, although some would disagree. The same for Phil Gordon, especially his more productive first term.

And Stanton, who assumed office in 2012? I'd also give him an 8. Phoenix has been fortunate in its mayors.

The light-rail divide

Glendale's city council killed an extension of light rail into the suburb, even though a majority of voters want it. Even though We Built It, You Bastards (WBIYB) — the epithet referring to the hysterical, thuggish opposition to the starter line, metropolitan Phoenix remains divided over mobility. The city, Tempe, and Mesa have embraced light rail. The other suburbs remain against it, crazy-so in the case of Scottsdale.

Phoenix did not benefit from the "Dallas effect." There the suburbs wanted nothing to do with light rail — until they saw the first line in action. Then they were clamoring to be included. Today, Dallas has the largest light-rail system in the United States.  Similar success stories are found in Denver, San Diego, Portland, and Los Angeles. The closest we came was Mesa. There, then-Mayor Keno Hawker convinced a skeptical council to pay for the starter line to go to Sycamore Street. Otherwise, Mesa would have been cut off — Tempe was only going to build to McClintock — and facing a costly future connection. Instead, Mesa saw the benefit and has extended the line to Mesa Drive with plans to go beyond.

Otherwise, the divide remains solid. It is driven in no small measure by racism and classism. The suburbs don't want "those people" coming on trains. And it's true that the poor and minorities heavily use transit in Phoenix. The criminal element of "those people" drive cars, but the white-right apartheid that defines metro Phoenix decisively defines the light-rail resistance. Another problem is the Republican fetish against rail of all kinds. It keeps us stuck with a 1971 transportation system when other advanced urbanized nations have high-speed rail and subways abuilding. Considering that the Republican Party began as the advocate of transcontinental railroads, this is an astounding but not surprising turnabout. It goes along with denying settled science on climate change. Anything, anything, to keep happy motoring going. Anything to keep the tax-cut scam going.

Light rail succeeded in Phoenix differently than in most cities. For example, in Seattle, where a majority of people use transit, light rail connects people to the major employment, retail and entertainment center of downtown, as well as the airport, sports venues, and the University of Washington. It's packed all the time and more lines are under construction despite efforts by Republicans in the Legislature and the suburbs to kill it. Most jobs in Phoenix are out on the freeways, especially in the East Valley. Instead, Phoenix's light rail found the sweet spot connecting the downtown and Tempe ASU campuses, as well as hauling people to Suns and (for now) Diamondbacks games. It helped reestablish downtown as a center of activity.

The water Ponzi scheme

Arizona has a sordid history of fraud, predating the predations of Ned Warren, whose land frauds in the 1960s and 1970s bilked hundreds of millions of dollars from gullible Americans. It continued through with the East Valley mafia's "alt fuels" scandal of the early 2000s and the big blowup with the Ponzi scheme of the housing bubble.

The relatively new racket, on a trajectory for crisis, concerns water. Last month, Arizona Republic reporter Rebekah L. Sanders produced a blockbuster about "water haulers" apparently stealing city of Phoenix water from hydrants for delivery to hundreds of residents in New River. Meanwhile, this entire area is seeing the ground water in its meager aquifers diminish as more people move in. New River grew by more than 40 percent, to 15,000, from 2010 to 2015.

Earlier this month, the Republic's Dustin Gardiner reported a fascinating story about Pinal County's complex but unsettling water situation:

So far, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, 15 proposed projects in the Pinal County area have received letters from the state notifying them that groundwater necessary for their projects could be in short supply.

It's likely the first time the state has sent such letters, but state officials say there is no reason to panic.

Of course officials would say that. And they're right, after their fashion. Panic isn't enough. 

The Chinese Cultural Center

In the late 1990s, a couple of years before my fateful and in retrospect foolish decision to come home and write a column for the Arizona Republic, I noticed a freeway sign for the "Chinese Cultural Center" and took the exit.

The location, on 44th Street, was strange. It was far from the original locations of Phoenix's Chinatown in downtown. The central core was dead then and the only memory of Chinatown was the Sing Hi Cafe, relocated to west Madison Street from its original site in the Deuce. There was also the Sun Mercantile building, a former warehouse, beside the basketball arena. Land was plentiful and more of the warehouse district was intact. Why not put a Chinese Cultural Center here?

But, no. And although the sign was one of the brown historic markers that usually went with something public such as the Desert Botanical Gardens, the Cultural Center appeared to be a private, mixed-use real-estate development. Yes, it had some Chinese-influenced architectural features, garden, restaurants, and Asian market, but it wasn't really a museum or cultural center. Wikipedia says it was developed by the Chinese state-owned COFCO group, but I don't know if this is accurate.

Lately, the center has been in the news because of the building's purchase by a Scottsdale private-equity outfit which intends to redo it as a corporate headquarters. Most of the center is emptied out and it's surrounded by a chain-link fence. Protests from the Chinese community brought a temporary restraining order protecting the garden statues and roof — but it runs out Nov. 3rd. Then a new hearing will be held and demolition could begin. The Republic and New Times have slightly different takes on the state of play.

In all, it is so Phoenix: Disregard for history, car-dependent far from light rail (WBIYB) or the central core, and ultimately just another a real-estate play.

Phoenix and Amazon HQ2

More than 100 cities are contending to win the economic prize of the decade, Amazon's second, "equal in every way" to its Seattle home, headquarters. Some $5 billion in investment and 50,000 high-paid jobs are possible. Both Phoenix and Tucson are among them. Above is a photo of the Day One tower, part of Amazon's massive downtown Seattle footprint.

I've written about this highly unusual development in my Seattle Times columns here and here. In "Dear Amazon, we picked your new headquarters for you," the Upshot team narrows down cities based on the company's request for proposals (RFP) and comes up with Denver. That jibes with my top three candidates, the others being Toronto and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the Upshot piece, Phoenix (and Tucson) is quickly eliminated: job growth isn't strong, plus lack of a highly skilled tech workforce, high quality of life (that attracts young, educated workers), strong mass transit, and willingness to "pay to play."

But let's not give up just yet. At the least, this could be an educational experience.

Returning to Rogue Columnist

The book is not quite done, but I'm 90 percent there and at least know, finally, how it ends (probably). I promised readers that columns would return in mid-September.

Coming back isn't an easy decision.

I know that nothing I write will change Phoenix's trajectory. It will bring more of the "Talton hates Arizona" claptrap. Nothing I write will alter the nightmare that began after Election Day 2016. I'm so tired of losing so much of the time.

As much as I hate "both sides" false equivalency, I feel increasingly alienated from the loud left, while "conservatism" is not only nihilistic and destructive but in power. It's tempting to watch the past few months and think Trump and the GOP are the gang who can't shoot straight and will soon be swept away. Don't fall for it.

Also, I tend to write what is now put in the genre ghetto of "long-form commentary," so you won't find quick hits, videos, and digital "storytelling" here, either. The photos tend to be limited and mostly as historical galleries.