Rogue Columnist

Arizona's pandemic economy

The longest economic expansion in history crashed into recession this spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment skyrocketed to Depression-era levels before recovering...some. Industries such as airlines, hotels, tourism, restaurants, and brick-and-mortar retailers were savaged.

I've written about this extensively in my Seattle Times columns. But let's narrow the lens to Arizona and Phoenix with help from the invaluable data collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Click on the chart for a larger view.

Unemployment:

 

Population growth (by numbers and year-over-year percentage change:

Phoenix's historic schools

Once upon a time, schools weren't built to resemble prisons with walls and steel fences, along with no shade and heat-radiating concrete and gravel. Even in early Phoenix, most were built to inspire. In 1873 (above) an adobe school at Central and Monroe was the beginning of better to come. Here are a few — click on the photo for a larger view:

Central School, shown in 1899, replaced the adobe structure. The town's population was about 5,500.

Monroe School at Seventh Street and Monroe, 1914. The building was preserved and is now the Children's Museum of Phoenix, alas without the shade trees and grass.

Adams School, later Grace Court, at Eighth Avenue and Adams, in 1920.

Amtrak's returning to Phoenix

Or so go some headlines and social-media posts I've read. In today's denuded newspaper environment, with thousands of reporters laid off and spreading news deserts, in-depth reporting is hard to find. Anyway, this salutary news was reported by KJZZ, KPHO/KTVK, and other outlets.

As it turns out, Amtrak isn't returning anytime soon. The origin of the stories was a presentation in September to the Rail Passengers Association by an Amtrak official. It proposed establishing new corridors for intercity rail that would potentially reach Phoenix in ... 2035. If that's not bad enough, the plan is mostly aspirational. No funding is available for the expansion. That might change under President "Amtrak Joe." But 2035. Really? Another plan in 2010 went nowhere.

As late as the 1960s, Phoenix Union Station was served by multiple passenger trains of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads. They gradually died off, the casualty of decades of national transportation policies that subsidized automobiles and airliners while strangling railroads with regulations and high taxes. When the Postal Service ended mail contracts in September 1967, it left Phoenix with only an every-other-day Sunset on the SP Northern Main Line. This continued when Amtrak took over national passenger trains May 1st, 1971 (killing almost 200 trains that still ran).

Superstition Vistas

In 1977, when I was working on the ambulance as an EMT-paramedic, I was temporarily exiled from the city and worked for Aids Ambulance (the former Mesa Ambulance Service). This involved rotating to stations in Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, and Apache Junction. At the latter, two 24-hour units were maintained and the crews could expect major trauma calls, even lake rescues, in largely empty country. We proclaimed ourselves the Junction Medics. Superstition Mountain loomed to the east, not unlike the late 1940s photo above.

In those days, we left behind Mesa around Gilbert Road and were enveloped by massive citrus groves. This continued for about 12 miles, broken only by an occasional trailer park. Not much was out here. AJ's population was closing in on 9,000.

We christened Rossmoor Leisure World, a pioneering gated property, "Seizure World" because of the nature of calls from its elderly retired population. Williams Air Force Base sat miles to the south, down two-lane roads crossing farmland. Completion of the freeway was years away, so Main Street in the Maricopa County part of our territory wasn't even named or part of Mesa. It was four-lane U.S. 60, primevally dark at night, no curbs or sidewalks, lethal to pedestrians. Otherwise, it was empty desert all the way to the iconic mountain.

I couldn't imagine it would be anything else.

Fast forward to the 2000s. Mesa had ballooned from 63,000 in 1970 to nearly 400,000, grown all the way to the Pinal County line. The little suburbs I served had grown supersized and merged together into a sprawling conglomeration called the East Valley. The groves and farms were gone. Superstition's slopes were profaned by subdivisions. And all that empty desert was the most coveted piece of land in central Arizona. The boosters called it Superstition Vistas.

Central through the years

The trouble with Central Avenue is it's not central to anything now." So a real-estate mogul told me in 2001. He was totally bought into endless sprawl at the expense of Phoenix, but he was also wrong. With the metroplex spread from Buckeye to Gold Canyon, Phoenix's most important street is more important and convenient than ever, as has been shown by light rail (WBIYB)  and growing infill.

I've written about Central before. But let's take a photo journey. Click for a larger image.

When it was Center Street, a southward look at Washington in the 1890s. Construction workers are installing water lines.

Here's a view of the Hotel Adams in 1909. It burned down a year later and was replaced by a "fireproof" hotel.

The Center Street, the first across the Salt River. Completed in 1910, the 2,120-foot-long span was claimed to be the longest reinforced concrete bridge in the world.

Commerce in old Phoenix

The McCulloch Brothers, who have left a priceless archive at ASU, were primarily commercial photographers. Their work, which spans from 1884 to 1947, offers a variety of images of business in the young, growing city. Most of this gallery is thanks to them.

You can read about the decades on these earlier history columns: Phoenix at statehood, the twenties, the thirties, the forties, and the fifties. Enjoy and click on the photo for a larger image.

A downtown sidewalk scene circa late 1910s with the Arizona Cigar Co. and the Apache Trail Auto Stage Co.

Washington Street, the city's main commercial drag in 1928. Awnings helped keep pedestrians cool.

Overland Motors at 10 W. Van Buren in the 1920s. These blocks of the city would become the main location of auto dealers.

Phoenix Motor Co., a GM dealership, was at 401 W. Van Buren Street. It's been restored as The Van Buren, a concert venue.

Miracle Mile

I don't know when the stretch of east McDowell from 10th Street to beyond 16th Street received this nickname. It's certainly not the legendary shopping destination of Chicago. But I do know it was Phoenix's first major retail-commercial artery outside of the downtown central business district. (Grand, Van Buren, and 17th Avenue/Buckeye were mostly motels, restaurants, and "curio" shops for travelers).

The Miracle Mile was special because it had an urban fabric missing from any other part of the city outside, even Midtown and Uptown on Central Avenue. The commercial buildings were densely packed, most right up on the sidewalk. McDowell was only four lanes wide. The result was walkability missing in most parts of a city built for the automobile.

McDowell's businesses continued beyond 16th Street and, going west, to Seventh Avenue. However, the Miracle Mile most exemplified urban authenticity. No wonder efforts are under way to reinvent the stretch. Included is a public art arch. Sadly, they face the headwinds of demolished buildings and a six-lane McDowell which is much more dangerous for pedestrians, especially at night.

A footnote: When I was around nine some friends and I rode our bikes along the mile, then turned around and came back — on the sidewalk but against traffic. I raced to catch up with them when a car pulled out from a side street. I hit the fender and tumbled over the hood, landing on the pavement. The terrified driver picked me up from the asphalt (which you shouldn't do) and carried me to the sidewalk. There an ambulance (Phoenix Ambulance, where I would work a decade later) took me to Good Sam to await my mother and grandmother. I got away with a mammoth bruise on my upper leg.

Come with me on a tour of the historic Miracle Mile (click for a larger image):

Arizona in play

Hope springs eternal. Every election cycle since Bill Clinton carried Arizona in 1996, the narrative has gone like this: The state will change politically as newcomers bring their (more liberal) values. And thanks to Hispanics Arizona is on the cusp (always!) of becoming a purple or even deep blue electorate. The 2016 map above shows how that worked out in the most recent presidential race.

Might it finally happen this year?

Before getting there, a little history. Arizona was a solidly Democratic state until Harry Rosenzweig persuaded Barry Goldwater to run against incumbent Sen. Ernest McFarland in 1952. Political fixer Steve Shadegg switched parties to run Goldwater's campaign — and Barry stunned Mac, the Senate Majority Leader and father of the GI Bill, in a close race.

Shadegg was a talented campaign manager and had a good product: Handsome, authentic, charismatic, sexy, ran with a fast crowd (the real Barry was nothing like he was depicted by the national press). But Mac was dragged down by more than this, more even than changing demographics. The Korean War was still dragging on as a stalemate. Americans who had won World War II were angry over a "police action" that didn't yield victory. Whatever glow Harry Truman attained in recent decades, he was deeply unpopular in 1952 and this hurt Democrats.

Still, it wasn't a sea change. Mac came back to Arizona and became highly successful as governor. And for the next three-plus decades Arizona was a competitive state for both parties. Our longest serving Senator was a Democrat, Carl Hayden.

Kenilworth centennial

My name and graduation date are etched in one of these bricks, which were installed to mark the 80th anniversary of my alma mater. I was honored to be one of the speakers. As for the bricks, they looked poorly carved so you might have to look hard to find the names of those of us who paid to have our names on them. But the important thing is that Kenilworth survives, thrives, and this year celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Kenilworth was the grandest of several handsome elementary schools completed in that era, including Monroe, Grace Court, and Booker T. Washington. It was in the neighborhood that initially had the same name, where Phoenix's elite moved. Now it's the Roosevelt and F.Q. Story historic districts. But that, and the ill-considered Papago Freeway inner loop, were far in the future in 1920. Then the streetcar ran along Fifth Avenue.

By the time I came along, in the 1960s, the streetcar was gone. But Third Avenue ran straight in front on the school, no curve for the freeway onramp. Seventh Avenue was only four lanes wide with a friendly crossing guard named Paul. We lived on Culver Street when I was in first and second grades, then moved to Cypress in today's Willo historic district for the remainder of my time there.

Railroads to Phoenix

Tempe History Museum photo

The recent derailment and fire of a Union Pacific train on the Salt River bridge is a reminder that railroads still play a role in Phoenix, even if far less than in the past. As the late David Myrick explained in his seminal Railroad of Arizona: Phoenix and the Central Roads, eight attempts were made to build a line to the Salt River Valley before the Maricopa and Phoenix Railroad's first train arrived on July 4th, 1887.

Among the many impediments — capital, supplies, heat, permission of the Pima Indians to cross their reservation — bridging the fickle Salt River was among the most persistent. The bridge above shows a "ten-wheeler" steam locomotive and two cars on the second iteration of the span. The first saw a flood destroy its approach trestle in 1890, then was severed entirely by the Great Flood of 1891, which also did substantial damage to canals and farmland; adobe structures collapsed from the rain.

In 1902, part of the bridge gave way without warning, dropping the locomotive 20 feet into the riverbed, killing one and severely injuring another, and leaving a passenger car hanging precariously. In 1905, the flooded Salt washed away a segment of this second bridge just minutes after a passenger train had crossed it. Similar washouts plagued the railroad's crossing of the Gila River.

Finally, the current heavy steel truss bridge was built in 1912-1913. UP says it will rebuild it — or at least replace one of the truss spans — which is good news for continued freight and potential future passenger service. Given Wall Street's pressure to suck profits from major railroads and Phoenix's relative unimportance on the system, I'd be surprised if UP built an entirely new and modern bridge.

Such was not always the case.

Phoenix, 1968

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy campaigning at Chris-Town mall on March 30th, 1968, soon after announcing his candidacy for president. He would be dead from an assassin's bullet less than three months later.

Some are comparing this year's unrest to 1968 — unpersuasively, to my mind — so it might be interesting to check in on Phoenix during that tumultuous year. Just what a different world this was is evident in a headline of the Arizona Republic on Monday, January 1st: "All The World Gay As Old Year Dies." Cultural language wasn't the only difference. The overnight low was 35 degrees, common then as Phoenix had several frosts each winter. The low would hit freezing later in the week. These are much more rare today amid the human-caused heat island. The paper carried Today's Prayer on the front page, as it had for years.

The sixties were a period of great change in Phoenix, where the magic of the old city's oasis was very much alive but the suburbanized future was coming — Maryvale and Sun City were abuilding. The city grew 32% during this decade. The city also entered the big leagues of sports in 1968 with the NBA expansion team Phoenix Suns.

Downtown was still a major retail center at the beginning of the decade, but it was in decline by 1968, hollowed out by Park Central and other malls, as well as low-cost retail buildings bulldozed to create Phoenix Civic Plaza with its convention center and Symphony Hall. This also leveled many single-room occupancy hotels and other parts of the Deuce. Critics warned the shattering of the city's skid row would send vagrants to nearby neighborhoods, which it did.

Clickbait, climate, and more

It's no coincidence that I've lately taken refuge in historical photo galleries. This is a dangerous time to write. Yes, my pen is still warmed up in hell, but fearless commentary is risky, as illustrated by the resignation of Bari Weiss from the New York Times and Andrew Sullivan being nudged out by New York Magazine. We're in a time of hysteria and thoughtcrime, made worse by social media.

So, a few nuggets that stay within the guardrails (I have a day job to protect).

• Clickbait news releases fill my mailboxes every day. I don't use most because they're based on questionable premises and shoddy data. Unfortunately, too much struggling media do. Hence, the recent story ranking Phoenix as "the best city in the U.S. for working remotely." It was carried unquestioningly by KTAR and the Phoenix Business Journal, among other local outlets.

The tiny thread of this press release came from an outfit called HighSpeedInternet, claiming to rank cities or metro areas. "We looked at things like internet connectivity, cost of living, and commute time savings. We also looked at cities with access to coffee shops, libraries, and coworking space, which gives remote workers a chance to work from different locations – when a pandemic isn’t occurring." Phoenix was No. 1, followed by Atlanta, Kansas City, Raleigh, and Toledo.

Here's why the "survey" doesn't pass the smell test. If you don't have an economy geared to remote work (e.g. Seattle with tens of thousands of highly skilled Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook workers), you couldn't possibly get that rank. Res ipsa loquitur.

David William Foster, an appreciation

David W. Foster in 2016 at a celebration of his 50th year teaching at ASU, in the Old Main building. At left is his wife, Virginia.

My dear friend, David William Foster, Regents Professor at Arizona State University, died peacefully last night at age 79. His ASU bio doesn't begin to capture the man in full, but it's worth quoting at length because of the depth and breadth of his accomplishments:

David William Foster is a Regents Professor of Spanish and women and gender studies at Arizona State University. He has written extensively on Argentine narrative and theater, and he has held Fulbright teaching appointments in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. He has also served as an Inter-American Development Bank professor in Chile. Foster has held visiting appointments at Fresno State College, Vanderbilt University, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Riverside, and Florida International University. He has conducted six seminars for teachers under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the most recent in Sao Paulo in summer 2013.

In 1989, Foster was named the Graduate College's Outstanding Graduate Mentor, and in 1994 he was named Researcher of the Year by the Alumni Association. He received the 2000 Armando Discepolo Prize for theater scholarship awarded annually by GETEA (Grupo de Estudios de Teatro Argentino y Latinoamericano) of the Universidad de Buenos Aires.In 2010, Foster was honored for his lifetime work on Argentine culture by the Centro de Narratoloia at a program held at the Argentine National Library. He is past president of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association.

We've lost a man of astounding achievements, and this comes atop the crushing loss of historian Jack August in 2017. Arizona, and the world, are less for these passages.

The Groundwater Act

History is written by the victors.

This marks the 40th anniversary of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act. The state Department of Water Resources said in a press release:

The 1980 Act was – and remains -- the most sweeping state law in the Nation governing groundwater use. In addition to creating a coherent, manageable system for helping wean Arizona’s most populous regions from groundwater use, it enacted the framework for long-term groundwater-use reduction that continues to the present.

“In Arizona, we stand on the shoulders of giants — pragmatic, visionary leaders whose achievements have shown us the way and enabled our high quality of life,” said Governor Doug Ducey.

If today's Arizonans know of the landmark law at all, it's via the shorthand that new developments were required to show a 100-year supply of water. But it was primarily intended to stop groundwater depletion, which was frighteningly reducing aquifers that had taken centuries or millennia to fill. The most noticeable sign of this phenomenon is subsidence, the collapse of the earth and opening of fissures as groundwater is pumped away.

Groundwater pumping was particularly problematic in Pinal County, which depended on it heavily for agriculture. The irrigation district from Coolidge Dam wasn't nearly enough for the demands of farming there, rapidly giving way to tract houses. The resulting dead landscape along I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson makes it The Ugliest Drive In America.

What happens now

The 1918-1920 "Spanish" influenza pandemic appeared on the front page of the Arizona Republican on Oct. 5th, 1918. The all-caps headline: INFLUENZA RUNS ITS MAD COURSE THROUGH NATION." By Nov. 18th, the newspaper promised a full local report: 64 cases the previous evening in the Emergency hospital and 74 at St. Joseph's (city population about 28,000). The subhead of the story said, "Steady Progress Made to Halt Spread."

The "Spanish" flu, which likely began at an Army post in Kansas, was the deadliest pandemic since the Black Death in the 14th century. It killed at least 50 million worldwide and 675,000 in the United States. World population was 1.8 billion (vs. 7.7 billion now). That of the United States was about 100 million (vs. 330 million now). The pandemic was spread by the world war and unusual in fatally striking young people. This was before antibiotics, ventilators, or other miracles to come.

Phoenix shut down for six weeks until cases went down in December 1918. Masks, successful in many cities, were "not given a fair chance" here because of Phoenicians' "tendency to revolt." Yet four waves total hit and an estimated 2,750 out of the state's 334,000 people died. Phoenix was too small then to be included in a fascinating University of Michigan study on how the 50 largest cities responded. These measures included shut-downs, lowering crowding, wearing masks, and strict rules against spitting on the sidewalk.

After it burned itself out, as all pandemics do, life went on. Cities didn't die — indeed, America became much more urbanized. Neither did transit or passenger trains or sit-down restaurants or retail shops. Interestingly, for all the recollections from my grandmother — who was 29 in 1918 — she never mentioned the influenza pandemic.

While I was away...

I turned in the manuscript for my new mystery, Sunset Limited, about a private eye in 1930s Phoenix. For a variety of reasons, it was the hardest book I ever wrote. The Poisoned Pen Press, now owned by another firm, Sourcebooks, and this book's publication date is next year.

Inhabiting Phoenix during the year 1933 was a fascinating experience and welcome escape from today, Great Depression notwithstanding. Above is the Monihon Building, at First Avenue and Washington, where my shamus has his office.

• Perhaps the most astonishing thing I learned while I was away from this column came from a seemingly routine story sent along by Rogue's volunteer Phoenix/Arizona researcher Michael Sampson. Headlined "EPCOR cites increase in sewage issues," it's ostensibly about flushable wipes in a sewer system. But as with much Arizona news, reading between the lines is where it gets interesting.

The story states, "EPCOR, which provides water, wastewater and natural gas service to around 665,000 people across 44 communities and 15 counties in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas..."

Wait. What?

20/20 hindsight

A score of things that made today's Phoenix:

1. ASU: In 1920, Tempe Normal School was awarding teaching certificates and providing high-school courses. From there it became Tempe State Teachers College (1925), Arizona State Teachers College (1929), Arizona State College (1945), and finally a university (1958). Today, under the dynamic leadership of Michael Crow, ASU is one of the largest universities in the United States. Among its five campuses/centers is the transformative downtown Phoenix location. The downside: Phoenix is by far the largest metropolitan areas in America with only one real, full-sized university.

2. Agriculture: A century ago, Phoenix was the center of a major agricultural empire thanks to its location in one of the planet's great alluvial river valleys. Anything would grow — just add water, which was abundant thanks to Theodore Roosevelt Dam and its successors. It's almost all gone. At one time, we could feed ourselves and exported produce and beef to the nation. Now Phoenix is almost entirely reliant on the 10,000-mile supply chain. A more foresighted place would have established agricultural trusts to preserve the citrus groves and Japanese flower gardens.

3. Air conditioning: Refrigerated air showed up in movie theaters and new hotels a century ago. Swamp coolers and central air units made Phoenix bearable for more people year-round (no more sleeping porches and wrapping oneself in wet sheets in summer). For awhile after World War II, Phoenix was also a center of air-conditioning manufacturing.

More Phoenix in the 1920s

Here are photographs of Phoenix from 100 years ago — I wrote about the decade in this column. Click on the image for a larger view. Enjoy!

The McColloch Brothers Commercial Photographers posing in 1928 outside the Arizona Republican offices. ASU preserves the McCulloch archive as an essential resource for images from 1884 to 1947.

First Street and Washington looking north with the Anderson Building on the left in 1928.

In 1926, Phoenix gained the northern main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad and most of its passenger trains at new Phoenix Union Station. This San Diego Chamber ad promotes a direct route between the two cities on the SP's challenging Carrizo Gorge route. That segment was originally begun by sugar magnate John Spreckels.

Arizona ends and odds

• The Arizona Republic continues to tiptoe around the water issue. Most recent is a story about the uneven water availability for cities in metropolitan Phoenix. A day before, the paper ran a piece headlined "Buckeye is the nation's fastest growing city. But it doesn't have the water to keep it up."

Where to begin? First, Buckeye is not a city except on legalistic paper. It is a far-flung collection of real-estate ventures ("master-planned communities") connected by wide highways. Buckeye has an astounding 393 square miles of area for 74,000 people. As James Howard Kunstler puts it, "the matrix of single-family home subdivisions, arterial highways and freeways, chain stores, junk food dispensaries, and the ubiquitous wilderness of free parking — the last of these implying just one insidious side-effect of this template for living: mandatory motoring."

By contrast, the city of Phoenix consists of 519 square miles and 1.7 million people — that's a city. Buckeye, once tiny stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad was never meant to be a "city."

But the big enchilada is that Arizona doesn't have the water to continue unlimited sprawl. Who will tell the people? Who will stop the Real-Estate Industrial Complex?

• Phoenix opened the "Grand Canalscape" trail along 12 miles of the Grand Canal from Interstate 17 to Tempe. Mayor Kate Gallego said, “People are surprised when I tell them that Phoenix has more canal miles than Venice or Amsterdam. Today we are integrating the canals into our communities to improve neighborhood access, add new public art spaces and contribute to a healthier Phoenix by introducing them as a recreational amenity."

The Grand Canal, one of the original legacies of the Hohokam, once looked like the photo above. The new "safe, convenient route for bicyclists and pedestrians" is a sun-blasted emptiness. Phoenicians don't even know what they lost. Aside from road-widening, the ministrations of the Salt River Project is the biggest killer of Phoenix's once-abundant canopy of shade trees. And more sprawl is not worth the destruction of even one of those trees, much less tens of thousands. In the meantime, enjoy your skin cancer and heat exhaustion. It's heartbreaking to imagine a shaded canal, even in stretches. But, no.

Affordable housing

This is one of those weaponized words whose meaning is made murky by activists. It often means low-income housing. It doesn't mean I am entitled to afford a place on Sunset Cliffs in San Diego making low pay in "sunshine dollars." This is complicated issue.

So first, some definitions. According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), "Families who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing are considered cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care. An estimated 12 million renter and homeowner households now pay more than 50 percent of their annual incomes for housing. A family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford the local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States."

A more comprehensive view comes from the Center for Neighborhood Technology's H+T Index, which captures housing plus transportation affordability. Metro Phoenix's H+T costs average 49%, vs. a 68% national average and 46% in pricey Seattle and 55% in San Diego. The research center states, "The traditional measure of affordability recommends that housing cost no more than 30% of household income...However, that benchmark fails to take into account transportation costs, which are typically a household’s second-largest expenditure. When transportation costs are factored into the equation, the number of affordable neighborhoods drops to 26% (nationally).

The National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual Out of Reach report drills deeper. For example, to afford central Phoenix's 85003 ZIP Code requires an average hourly wage of $20.38 for a two-bedroom apartment. Maryvale takes $17.69 an hour (working full time). The once middle-class south Scottsdale's 85257 takes $23.08.

Now we're getting close to the problem in metro Phoenix.

Phoenix in the 'teens'

In 2010, Phoenix and Arizona were stuck in the worst (by most measures) bust since the Great Depression. Unemployment peaked at 10.9% in January statewide and 10.2% in metro Phoenix. Single-family housing starts in the metro area plunged from a monthly peak of 6,000 in 2004 to 854. Construction jobs fell from 183,000 in June 2006 to 81,000 in the summer of 2010. Phoenix was a national epicenter of the housing crash.

It was an eerie time. Freeways that had been clogged with tradesmen's pickup trucks were noticeably empty.

Now, nearly a decade later, the economy has recovered. Metro Phoenix joblessness was 4.1% in October, higher than the 3.6% nationally but still a marked improvement. Building permits clawed out of the 2009 trough but are still at levels of the early 1990s.

Population — the holy of holies worshipped by the local-yokel boosters — bounced back. After falling from 2008 to 2010, it rose by 653,000 by 2018 in the metro area. A much ballyhooed snapshot had the city itself the fastest-growing in the United States from 2017 to 2018. But the percentage rate of change looks to be slower this decade than the 2000s or the record 1990s.

True, the decade doesn't officially end until a year from now. But the "twenties" begin in the popular imagination this New Year's. So let's take stock of the "teens":

Spreading tech innovation

A new report from the Brookings Institution highlights how "Superstar Cities" — Boston, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco and Silicon Valley — captured nine out of 10 jobs at the headwaters of advanced industries from 2005 to 2017. (See the coverage here and here). And it offers an ambitious plan to spread tech centers to "loser cities" in what is mostly considered flyover country.

An interesting footnote: One of the authors of the Brookings study is my friend Mark Muro, who worked at the Morrison Institute at ASU in the early 2000s.

One can't argue with this reality, particularly set against rising inequality and four decades of mergers that took away the economic crown jewels of hundreds of American cities. But some context is also necessary. In addition to these headwinds, many of the "loser cities" made their own fate.

And I'm not talking about Detroit or Cleveland. A better example can be found in Phoenix. Despite being the nation's fifth-largest city and 13th largest metropolitan area, Phoenix punches well below its weight. And no outside force has done this to Phoenix as much as Phoenix has done it to itself.

Into the wild

When I was about three, my family was driving from Tucson to Phoenix in those pre-Interstate times. I have three vivid memories. The first is the restaurant where we ate breakfast; it had ancient double doors with windows behind ancient double screens. The second is the fierce rainstorm that cut visibility severely, almost the desert version of a whiteout. We headed out of Coolidge, my mother behind the wheel, me between her and my grandmother. No other cars were on the two-lane road.

My third memory is of a vast torrent of fast-moving latte-colored water that suddenly appeared in front of us.

I'm sure it wasn't as wide or as biblical as I recall it. I had never seen water in a river before! But what was undeniable is that the bridge had washed out — perhaps at the Gila River — and only my mother's caution, slow speed, and fighter-pilot reflexes prevented our deaths.

As I write now, searchers are still trying to find six-year-old Willa Rawlings, lost when her father's "military-like truck" was swept away in flooding Tonto Creek. The bodies of her brother and cousin, both five, were found Saturday. Only Willa's shoe has been recovered. Her parents escaped.

The Republic's Laurie Roberts hit the right notes of sympathy and bafflement — that the driver would try to cross the flooded creek, and that the Legislature in its low-tax religion has failed to build a bridge. Yet I suspect little will change. Especially on the common-sense front, for bridges can be overwhelmed as anyone knows who remembers Scottsdale's comic attempts to span Indian Bend Wash in the 1970s.

'Solutions' annotated

From the Arizona Republic on Nov. 17th. My annotations are in black.

Headline: ‘We need to act fast’: Statewide forum focuses on climate solutions for Arizona. Journalists are pushed to seek solutions to largely insoluble problems. Steve Jobs was more on the mark when he critiqued Fox News to Rupert Murdoch: "The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society."

Lede: With climate change cranking up the heat and intensifying droughts, more than 400 people from across Arizona gathered Friday and Saturday to brainstorm solutions for reducing planet-warming pollution and preparing for a hotter, drier future. What people? Doug Ducey? Developers? Republicans who have held control over the Legislature for decades? Elliott Pollack? Grady Gammage. No...

Second graf: Among them were young activists who see climate change as the defining issue for their generation. The time to act is now, they said. You bet. But what power do they have? Do they vote? Did they drive to the conference, adding to climate-causing emissions (rhetorical question)?

Next grafs: “This is rapid change and we should do something about it before it’s too late,” said Alicia Rose Clouser, a 13-year-old eighth-grade student from Sinagua Middle School in Flagstaff and a member of the Navajo Nation.

“My people will be suffering for generations on if we don’t do something,” she said. Mandatory inclusion of a woman and "marginalized person" but otherwise empty information calories.

Next: The two-day conference at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff brought together the students and teenage activists along with academics, health officials, tribal representatives, environmentalists, representatives of farming businesses, urban planners and city officials, and people from the community who said they wanted to be part of the discussion. Now we finally get the "who" — none of whom have the power to enact policies that would address climate change.

St. Luke's memories

St. Luke's Hospital was built on the ruins of the dense Hohokam village called La Ciudad. It tilts at an angle because it had to fit against the original canal dug by Jack Swilling and his gang from Wickenburg. The Town Ditch or Swilling's Ditch was covered in the 1920s but Villa Street preserved the angle. Today's St. Luke's extends all the way to Van Buren Street with a ghastly spread of rocks and gravel. Yet the hospital you see above was built in the shady Montezuma Heights barrio of houses and public housing projects south of Edison Park. No gravel.

In my time on the ambulance, I spent a good amount of time at the emergency room of St. Luke's (or, as we called it with our dark humor, St. Puke's). In the New Testament, Luke the Evangelist was referred to as a physician.

Once, we heard an explosion outside and went to check what had happened. A patient had thrown himself off an upper floor and was well beyond our ministrations. On a happier note, we regularly had lunch (Code 7) at nearby Sevilla's (before it moved to McDowell), a family-owned Mexican restaurant surrounded by the 'Jects. The homeboys kept watched over our units so they wouldn't be broken into for drugs or stolen.

Off duty, I would visit my mother there, in her twice-annual stays as a patient, being treated for the emphysema that would kill her within a few years. The care was good.

I write all this because, after a century at this location, St. Luke's is closing.

Pushing the Pinal envelope

I attended kindergarten in Coolidge. Back then it was a compact town of 5,000 people. It boasted a charming little Spanish-style railroad depot on the Southern Pacific, with six passenger trains and many freight trains a day. My uncle showed me how to place a penny on the tracks to be mashed under a passing train.

Pinal County was home to about 63,000 people, most working in agriculture. Florence, the county seat, had a population of about 2,100, Casa Grande, another compact desert town on the SP, held 8,300, Eloy 4,900, and the remote crossroads of Maricopa a few hundred. Even then, Pinal County had a water problem: It was almost exclusively dependent on pumping groundwater. Coolidge Dam in neighboring Gila County wasn't enough for Pinal County's water needs even in 1960.

Fast forward to today. Pinal County holds an astonishing 447,000 people — more than the city of Phoenix in 1960. Maricopa alone (above) had an estimated population of more than 50,000 as of last year. This once-rural, once-distant county has become a Phoenix bedroom community — except the passenger trains are long gone. And, contrary to one of the key goals of the Central Arizona Project and Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980, it's still dependent on pumping from ever-diminishing aquifers.

Paving Arizona

Seattle recently completed demolition of the double-deck 1950s-era Alaskan Way Viaduct, which ran for more than 2 miles along the waterfront downtown. Now the traffic is in a tunnel and the city is preparing to enjoy unencumbered access to Elliott Bay. An even more ambitious goal is to put a long lid on Interstate 5 downtown, which is already covered by a park for a few blocks.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, the $8 billion, 63-mile High Desert Corridor freeway has been canceled. It would have been the first new freeway in LA County in a quarter century. According to Streetsblog, the project "would have spanned two counties connecting the north L.A. County cities of Palmdale and Lancaster with San Bernardino County cities of Victorville, Apple Valley, and Adelanto. The route would have gone through a patchwork of privately-owned undeveloped wild lands populated by Joshua Trees." The PIRG Education Fund named it one of the worst highway boondoggles in the nation.

But that's not how we roll in central Arizona. In addition to the unneeded South Mountain Freeway (pictured above), the state Department of Transportation is planning a $55-mile freeway running from Apache Junction to Eloy. There it would connect with Interstate 10. When in a hole, keep digging.

Library late fees fade away

When I was nine years old, I went to the main branch of the Phoenix Public Library (a short bike ride from home) and applied for my youth library card (nine was the youngest one could apply). It was the most prized occupant of my wallet. It was also an important passage into growing up.

Kenilworth School had a well-stocked library. That was unlike today, where underfunded schools often lack what was once considered a basic. Along with the charter school racket, which operates out of anywhere without resources or much oversight (the better to siphon public money to the owners), the now rely on the city libraries. This is a shocking change from when I attended Arizona public schools.

Anyway, my school library wasn't enough for this young bibliophile or for many of my friends. I wanted to wander inside the big coral-colored building at Central and McDowell (Barry Goldwater's name was on the plaque, from when he was a city councilman). The Arizona Room, stocked with history, beguiled me from the moment I walked in. I wanted to have borrowing privileges. Of course if one was late returning a book, a fine was attached. But I never got a fine (and we were broke, often hovering on the edge of financial catastrophe). I took my responsibility as a card holder seriously. Being a library-card holder was a privilege, not a right. I'm still a card-holder of the Phoenix Public Library, as I have been in the many cities and towns in which I lived. Even in little Payson, when I spent the summer of 1967, had a library and I got a card.

Turns out this is very 20th century/last millennium thinking.

The war on shade

Behold the lovely mature pine trees in the photo above (thanks to Aimee Esposito, executive director of Trees Matter). They will soon be demolished if a plan is approved for Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church to use half its land in the Alhambra district for single-family houses in a gated property. WWJD?

Like the newspaper business, mainline Protestant churches are in such a catastrophic decline, much of it self-inflicted, that their most valuable earthly possessions are their property. But this latest abomination, reported by New Times, is part of an ongoing catastrophe that is going to help make Phoenix uninhabitable in the future — and is helping raise local temperatures now, not to mention making most of it remarkably ugly.

Most Phoenicians today likely have no memory of the old city, a lush Eden of trees, grass, hedges, flowers, citrus groves, farms, and the priceless Japanese gardens. This was made possible now only because of our federally funded water projects, but also because the heart of the Salt River Valley is a natural oasis, near the confluence of five rivers and sitting on some of the most fertile alluvial soil on earth. Growing up, I never saw one palo verde, most varieties of which provide zero shade, outside of going into the desert.

Today, Phoenix is ever more a paved monstrosity of asphalt, concrete, and grass, with the occasional "shade structure" which doesn't actually provide shade. Not surprisingly, overnight temperatures have risen 10 degrees in my lifetime. Losing the regular frosts once commonplace, West Nile virus is a new scourge, carried by mosquitoes that were once killed off in winter. And this is before the rising dangers of climate change.

Musing about the future

Most of our best commenters — people who made these columns worth writing and reading — have absented themselves in recent months. Traffic continues to rise modestly and I get nice emails from readers, for which I'm grateful. And I totally understand potential reasons the commenting A Team is gone. For example, ruminating over our situation is exhausting and perhaps toxic.

The outcome on the light rail vote (WBIYB) was a rare win. And I'm happy that the central core continues to fill in. Both these are longtime concerns of this column and, before that, when I wrote for the Arizona Republic. Otherwise, we keep losing. Phoenix and Arizona keep sprawling out, heedless of the cost and inefficiency of thinning out population; keep the "business model" of population growth and a low-end economy; keep extremist politics; keep throwing down gravel and ignoring the desperate need for shade trees in the city, etc.

When I started this blog in 2008, it was pro-bono work offering commentary, context, and history that wasn't being written elsewhere. That remains the case; if anything, institutional knowledge has declined sharply. But I have my day job at the Seattle Times and my novels, as well as feelers to write more history books. Without being anointed and becoming a best-seller, I would be content never to see my name in print again. But, as I've written before, I always felt I owed. That Phoenix was built on achieving impossible deeds — we made the desert bloom! — and it was my duty to carry the tradition on. I was raised that way. What a quaint concept today.

Camelback through the years

No physical landmark says "Phoenix" more than Camelback Mountain. It's also a geological oddity. The camel's hump was formed in the Precambrian era, from 2 billion years ago (in Arizona) to 600 million years ago. But the camel's head came from the Tertiary period, as recently as 66 million old — it was created around the time as the Papago Buttes.

As Halka Chronic writes in Roadside Geology of Arizona, "The whole sequence of Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks that should come between the Tertiary head and the Precambrian hump is missing!" It's also the only faulted mountain in the Salt River Valley, the hump caused by the earth being lifted upward rather than volcanic activity.

President Rutherford B. Hayes included Camelback in the Pima and Maricopa Indian reservation, a move reversed by the Territorial Legislature six months later. The 1956 photo above shows the mountain was still pristine, the same iconic image seen by the Hohokam, to whom it was sacred, and the first pioneers. But preservation was tardy and by this time private interests owned the entire mountain.

By the early 1960s, houses were marching up the side, with plans to go all the way to a resort on the top. I write about the ultimately successful effort to save the mountains elsewhere. It is true that Barry Goldwater took on the cause of Camelback after his unsuccessful 1964 presidential bid. We schoolchildren collected coins for the effort. But it ultimately took federal money, thanks to Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, to save the upper reaches of Camelback.

Phoenix extended Arcadia Drive north of the mountain's namesake avenue to serve the luxury homes clinging to the side. Who doesn't remember their first kiss from Valle Vista Road with the city lights reaching to the horizon. Unfortunately, recent years have also seen enormous numbers of hikers, especially tenderfoots attempting the ascent of this wilderness in the hottest weather. Their rescues put first-responders at risk and cost city money.

Let's take a visual tour of this magical mountain through the years:

Snakebit

I've spent a good part of my career advocating public funding for stadiums as a necessary evil to protect important civic assets. For example, I supported new stadiums for the legendary Reds and the perpetually disappointing Bengals ("Bungles”) when I was in Cincinnati. These new venues kept pro teams that would have otherwise decamped for larger markets.

I did it again most recently with the Phoenix Suns arena, arguing in November that allowing the NBA team to leave downtown would be a terrible blow to the central city:

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.

Now come the Diamondbacks, demanding further pro-team welfare. The team can leave Chase Field as early as 2022 and has been sending ominous threats: Exploring use of the Cardinals stadium in Glendale for while, flirting with the Las Vegas area, fielding feelers from other cities. The most comfort officials would give is that the D-backs "are highly likely to remain in Arizona."

And I'm starting to think: Git. Let. Them. Leave.

The plot against light rail

This is the reality of Phoenix's light-rail system: nearly 16 million passengers carried in the most recent fiscal year; expansion of the original 20-mile starter line to 26 miles; an essential link between ASU's Tempe and downtown campuses; 30 percent of riders use the train for work; large numbers use it to reach sporting events; $11 billion in private and public investment has occurred along the line since 2008.

Light rail has also proved essential in giving Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa a fighting chance in an era where talented young people and high-quality companies want to be in city cores served by rail transit.

None — not one — of the hysterical predictions of opponents to light rail came true.

No wonder that voters backed light rail in three elections, in 2000, 2004, and 2015. We built it.

But destructive forces never sleep, never stop. Backed by dark money — including the Koch brothers and their nationwide war on transit — here comes Proposition 105 in the Aug. 27th special election. As is often the case, it's presented as an affirmative to deliberately confuse voters. "Vote yes!" hoping some will think they are supporting rail transit by marking that line. Signs say, "Yes on 105. Fix our roads" — but this has nothing to do with fixing roads; that's a different budget and roads are being fixed.

Don't fall for it. Vote no on Prop. 105 and its devilish companion, Prop. 106.

Phoenix, 1969

I watched the Apollo 11 landing and moon walks in Phoenix with my grandmother. She was born on the frontier with horses and buggies, was alive when the Wright brothers first flew, when Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic...and now this. The entire trajectory of her life had been one of American progress (sliced bread! air conditioning! paper towels!). Mine was different.

Fifty years ago, Phoenix was on the cusp of nearly 582,000 people and Maricopa County of 971,000, increases over the decade of 32 percent and 46 percent respectively. The aggressive annexation that took the city from its compact 17 square miles in 1950 to 188 square miles a decade later continued. By 1970, Phoenix would spread over 248 square miles, all the way to the two lanes of Bell Road.

Charter government was still firmly in control of City Hall with little foreshadowing that its era was coming to an end. Milt Graham was still mayor. Young and popular, Graham had helped seed Charter's demise by running for a third two-year term, breaking the promise that the Charter Government Committee put up civic stewards, not career politicians, and mayors only served two terms. Importantly for the city's future, Graham was vehemently anti-transit.

Phoenix at statehood

On Feb. 14th, 1912, Phoenix became the capital of the 48th state — Arizona would remain the "Baby State" until 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union. With 11,314 people in the 1910 Census, it was still less populous than Tucson but would soon surpass the Old Pueblo, with growth of nearly 166 percent in this decade.

The new state capital was still fairly isolated. A transcontinental railroad main line wouldn't arrive until 1926. Still, in 1887 a branch from Maricopa had been completed by a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific, although it was plagued by flood wash-outs. The Santa Fe's Peavine branch had arrived from the ATSF main line at Williams via Prescott in 1895. A streetcar network was growing, too.

Phoenix was far from the powerhouse it would become. Arizona's economy was primarily driven by mining, so towns such as Bisbee and Jerome generated spectacular wealth with their copper mines. The same was true of the mining district around Globe. Railroads were also major players. All were controlled by out-of-state interests, a major reason the Progressive-era state constitution established a Corporation Commission to regulate at least rail lines (and later utilities).

Economy update

The expansion is now the longest in American history. According to the Arizona Commerce Authority, metro Phoenix posted the largest job gain from May 2018 to May 2019, at 3.2 percent. Let's take a closer look:

Arizona and metro Phoenix reached a historic high in seasonally adjusted civilian jobs as of May (click on the charts to enlarge):

Median household income adjusted for inflation also showed gains:

So far, not so bad...

Hot enough

It's not true that Phoenix has no seasons. Not even the joke that they are "hot, hotter, hottest, and hell." They just change with a sublime nuance. Or this was once the case. Leaving the delightful 70s in Seattle, I am here for 110, headed to 111. This is five to six degrees hotter for this time of year than normal. Summer temperatures have risen about 10 degrees in my lifetime, especially the overnight lows. And summer is lasting longer.

This is mostly the result of "local warming," where the farms, groves, and desert have been replaced by sprawl and gravel, along with the destruction of thousands of shade trees and the grass and landscaping that made the city more beautiful and livable. I suspect that few people know this or even notice it. For one thing, Phoenix suffers from a high rate of population churn. And many of today's residents are here for the heat, "the hotter the better." Advanced automobile air conditioning and air-conditioned houses cloak the danger of this human-made environment. So when all the asphalt, concrete, and fruit of the Arizona Rock Products Association release the accumulated heat after sunset, so what?

Consequences abound. Several large wildfires have raged. I also notice on the Phoenix Fire Department regional dispatch site a significant uptick in brush fires, requiring significant commitment of apparatus to knock down. One reason is the expanding exurban development into the desert. Fools go hiking and mountain climbing in this weather. That was once rare. Summer was the time to spend inside, especially during the day (when the nights cooled down). When I was a paramedic in the 1970s, a summer mountain rescue was extremely rare. No more. Now, multiple rescues happen every day, putting first responders at risk and the "victims" often near death.

Growth and its discontents

The Census reported earlier this spring that Phoenix was the fastest-growing city in the country. During the Great Recession, I wrote in jest the prayer of the Arizona developer: "Please God, give me one more boom, with championship golf." And the prayer has been answered, or so it seems on the surface.

The city added 25,288 new residents between 2017-2018. But even adding in fast-growing suburbs such as Buckeye and the "town" of Gilbert, the metropolitan area is far below the 100,000-plus it was growing in the 1990s and early 2000s. A glowing Forbes article talked of "a business-friendly environment, plentiful job opportunities and affordable cost of living." But the reality is closer to the one elucidated by commenter Concern Troll: Most of the population increase in Phoenix can be attributed to retirees and the low-wage service jobs that cater to them.

Permits for new housing units in metro Phoenix haven't recovered to their pre-crash levels; they're about where they stood in the early 1990s. Construction employment is only where it stood at the turn of the century, far below the mid-2000s. If the local-yokel boosters — "things must be good because people keep moving here" — are having a growthgasm, they're faking it.

Big preservation alert

The most precious treasure of old downtown Phoenix is in flux. This could provide the city a long-overdue opportunity. Or it could go sideways in a hurry. I'm writing, of course, about Union Station.

According to CBRE, the big real-estate services firm "has been retained as exclusive representative to offer qualified investors the opportunity to purchase fee interest in the iconic...Union Station site in downtown Phoenix at 401 W. Harrison Street." It goes on, "Depending on the vision of a new owner, the Property may be eligible for a myriad of monetary and tax advantaged programs..."

Sprint, which has used the station to house switching equipment since the late 1980s, intends to move out before the end of next year. The Union Pacific Railroad's ground lease ends in March 2023, a century after the building was completed. Now what?

One of the most popular columns on this site is my history of Union Station (with photos) — you can read it here. The Spanish revival building brought together the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads in one full-service station. Three years after its completion, the SP finished its northern main line and routed most of its passenger trains through Phoenix. The city was served by multiple intercity trains a day through the 1960s.

The last Amtrak train called here in 1996. The state refused to partner with the SP (merged with Union Pacific the same year) to maintain the west line between Phoenix and Wellton to passenger-train standards. Phoenix became the largest American city by far with no intercity rail service. Sprint — which was started by the SP — using the depot for switching equipment helped protect and save it. Being on the National Register of Historic Places wouldn't have stopped Joe Arpaio's jail-building mania and other losses in the Warehouse District. Mesa lost its lovely SP depot to arson...no one cared.

Who will care now?

The Post Office

A conversation on one of the Phoenix history pages of Facebook got me thinking about the thousands of cuts that bled downtown nearly to death. It was about the old Main Post Office at Central and Fillmore, now mostly used by ASU but contained some incomplete or wrong information. Still, a useful jumping off point.

Back in 2013, I wrote a three-part series entitled "What Killed Downtown" (see here, here, and here). It's still the gold standard on the subject. But the tale of the Post Office illuminates it in microcosm.

This lovely Spanish-revival building was completed in 1936, designed by Lescher & Mahoney, the architects responsible for many of Phoenix's finest buildings. Among them are the Orpheum Theater, Brophy College Chapel, El Zariba Shrine Auditorium (former home to the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum), Phoenix Title and Trust Building (today's Orpheum Lofts), Hanny's, and the Palms Theater.

It was planned in the 1920s to replace the Post Office segment of the old Federal Building in the government block at Van Buren and First Avenue. With Sen. Carl Hayden's backing, it was originally intended to be six stories tall and closer to the central business district. But because of expensive land, the site was move north across from the new Westward Ho and the height was lowered. Building it was among the myriad federal projects that lifted Phoenix out of the Great Depression.

The oasis, in photos I

My mother told me I was "a city kid" and a "desert rat." She was right about the first, but not the second. I was a child of the oasis, growing up in what are now the historic districts north of downtown and in the old city.

It's almost all gone now. Every time I'm back in Phoenix, I am struck my how ugly it is, especially with the proliferation of skeleton trees and heat-radiating gravel in places they should not be. If this is the price paid to accommodate ever-expanding sprawl, it's a devil's bargain, a short hustle. With the enormous numbers of newcomers and population churn, people don't even know what has been lost.

One of the most heartbreaking losses was the Japanese flower gardens along Baseline Road.(above). An agricultural trust could have prevented it. But the feral greed to replace it with faux Spanish-Tuscan crapola was too much to overcome.

A reminder: Phoenix is at or near the convergence of five rivers in the world's wettest desert. Scores of shade trees are native. With the alluvial soil of the Salt River Valley, anything will grow here.

But as on the national level (only 26,000 history majors now), the loss of memory is a dangerous thing. Milan Kundera, the Czech novelist, wrote that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Thanks especially to the priceless McCulloch Bros. Collection at the ASU archives, we can struggle. I only wish more of these images were in color.

Here are a few views of authentic Phoenix. Click on an image for a larger view:

Historic red alert

This priceless, century-old house at 7019 N. Central Ave. has a demolition permit. The Preservation Police and every citizen needs to contact their council members, planning commission, "village" poobahs — whatever it takes. This is what old Phoenix looked like — not endless red-tile-roofs, concrete, gravel, and skeleton trees.

Downtown living

Most of the historical photos on this site show the rise of a handsome small city, with commercial buildings, stores, churches, and warehouses.

But single-family houses and apartments proliferated in and near the original townsite even as monuments such as the Heard Building and Luhrs Tower rose. People were living downtown before it became desirable again in recent years. Above are the Dennis and Jacobs Mansions on Monroe between Second and Third Streets along "Millionaires Row," built in the 1890s. They were demolished in the 1950s for surface parking lots.

Rosson House, restored in Heritage Square, was designed by architect George Franklin Barber — he sold his designs by mail order. It was completed in 1895 at 139 N. Sixth Street. The Stevens-Haustgen Bungalow is nearby, also restored.

Most of the residences downtown were more modest. For example, the 1935 City Directory shows homes for Mrs. Della Jeanette at 129 S. Third Avenue, Mr. Samuel Lopez at 133 S., and Mr. Nestor Chavez at 333 S. Third Ave. Some were businesses where the owners lived on an upper floor. But others were simple, single-story houses gradually giving way to the expanding Warehouse District. The same is true along south Second Street, including parts of Chinatown, connected by Madison and Jackson streets, Gold and Paris alleys.

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.