...."Phoenix residents, business owners and civic advocates are all focusing hard on the bringing the community together"....
Phoenix is the youngest major city in America. As it grows, downtown Phoenix has become a region struggling to find its own identity.
By: Jessica Testa
PHOENIX- If the Valley is a box of toys, downtown Phoenix is the spinning top. It is the one region that, since Phoenix was founded in 1881, has never stopped expanding, evolving or changing.
Downtown was once the Valley's social epicenter. Beginning in the 1940s, movie stars and celebrities flocked from Hollywood to Arizona's more recluse desert city, where in beautiful hotels, they could enjoy both privacy and the perfect weather for sunbathing in December. (Some say Phoenix's claim to cinematic fame still lies in the first five minutes of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic, "Psycho," which zooms onto the Jefferson Hotel.)
During that era, Phoenix became one of America's modern cities- still a vacation city for wealthy urbanites, but now graced with the midcentury modern architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Wenceslaus Sarmiento and Ralph Haver.
Over the next few decades, downtown Phoenix became less of a social hotspot and more of a financial hub. As the state's central business district, Phoenix began drawing in international business with the surging economy of the 1970s and 1990s. The city became home to regional headquarters for many big banks-JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bank, Bank of America, Compass Bank and Midfirst Bank.
From the 1960s to the early 2000s, business was the city's main draw. No one lived in downtown Phoenix, as there was nowhere to live. Neighborhoods framed the outskirts of the city, but stopped abruptly at the corners of the 1.5-square-mile skyscraper-dotted region. Unlike other major cities, downtown Phoenix didn't have high-rises and apartment buildings on every block. The city didn't start building residential complexes until the late 1990s and early 2000s- when life started to come to downtown Phoenix.
It might have started with the light railopening in 2008, as suggested in a "New York Times" article. The Valley had long been anticipating a new form of transportation, but the 20-mile light rail line did more than facilitate transportation. It brought new life to downtown Phoenix. There was suddenly a cool, hip way to travel to downtown Phoenix- pub crawls and bar hopping ensued. Businesses were also suddenly interested in opening shop on the line, which went straight through the heart of downtown Phoenix.
Then again, the resurgence of interest in downtown Phoenix may have also come from Arizona State University, which in 2008 opened two of its journalism and nursing schools, bringing with it a young and wide-eyed chunk (nearly 14,000) of its 60,000 student population.
Or perhaps it was just a cultural shift that inspired a desire to turn downtown Phoenix into something resembling Chicago, San Francisco or New York City. A place where you could live, work or play; a place that was welcoming to the arts- not just a destination city for baseball or basketball games.
That desire to revitalize downtown Phoenix is in full swing now, with Phoenix residents, business owners and civic advocates all focusing hard on bringing the community together.
There's a new emerging art scene on Grand Avenue that threatens to dethrone Roosevelt Row as the Valley's king of hip art districts. There's CityScape, a new skyscraper project that promises to bring lifestyle destinations to downtown Phoenix, including a bowling-lane nightclub, buzz-worthy restaurants and a pharmacy- the only one in downtown Phoenix.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is one of the city's biggest proponents for downtown revitalization- an advocate who has encouraged businesses and cultural hubs to move to the 90-block downtown region.
"Instead of closing up Friday at 5 o'clock, or any day, we now have vibrancy seven days a week," the mayor said in a March 2010 interview with Arizona Capitol Times. "We have activity."
..."CityScape... is poised to bring new life back onto downtown streets"...
..."The campus has given life to downtown"...
-Bryan Custer
..."As an economic development effort, the project has the potential to accelerate the revitalization and redevelopment of
Lower Grand Avenue"...
..."Ninety percent of our guests are repeat guests... a lot of people know about our historical context"...
-Kenny Melancon
Tear Down of Ramada Inn
Photo By: Kristina Zverjako
