In mid 1999 I was asked by a member of the Downtown Scottsdale’s Merchants Association to give them my perspective of a proposed Redevelopment project on the canal in downtown Scottsdale. The proposed project would have extended about a half a mile on both sides of the canal and contain multiple high rise buildings. The project would receive a sales tax rebate in excess of a million dollars. At the time there were only six buildings with heights exceeding thirty-six feet in the downtown area. The vast majority of the buildings were one and two-story southwestern styled buildings.
Recognizing that all the facets of the identity of a desired vacation location are inseparably linked to the look and feel or sense of place is fundamental to making the decisions about how to deal with the desirability of a location such as Downtown Scottsdale.
As a well-traveled merchant stated “you can show anyone on earth, who has traveled, a picture of Scottsdale and Camelback and they will know it is Scottsdale.” Multiple generations of families had been vacationing in Scottsdale on an annual basis for years. Tourism was the primary income source for the city for more than 50 years
The conclusion was that the proposed project represented a dramatic departure from the stated goals that had facilitated the unique nature of downtown Scottsdale. The proposed project would result in (1) reduction of the love the citizens and visitors had for downtown Scottsdale. (2) a decline in visitors shopping in downtown. (3) a reduction in the value of the existing businesses. These and other issues brought me to the conclusion that the proposed project should not be built.
Because the proposed project was a Redevelopment project, it had to be voted on by the citizens of Scottsdale. The expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the developer and city did not change the citizen’s perception of what they valued. When the votes were counted, the citizens had turned the project down.
Immediately thereafter a Citizens group was formed to develop a realistic set of recommendations that supported and enhanced the elements that had made downtown Scottsdale famous.
The group, called T.O.P.S., consisted of approximately 12 to 14 citizens who represented property owners, merchants, real estate, tourism and citizens.
I became the chairman of the organization. Over the next year we examine all the facets of downtown that impacted the look and feel of downtown. By the time we finished we had met with and talked to, close to a thousand citizens to find out what they liked or didn’t like about their downtown. Some of the things we examined were use, traffic, lighting, parking, transportation, height, density and architecture. Out of the external input and analysis a set of recommendations was created. The recommendations were presented to the City Council as a part of a request for the formation of a Task Force. The City Council enthusiastically voted to create a Downtown Task Force of twenty-one to take those recommendations and transform them into a set of recommendations to present to the City Council to be voted on. In that action the Mayor gave an instruction to the staff. They were not to try to influence the Task Force, but to just provide any support we needed. At the time I did not grasp the implications of the statement.
Approximately thirty other interested citizens became non-voting members of the task force. I was elected co-chair and eventually became the chair of the task force. Using the framework established in the T.O.P.S. as a basis for the Task Force structure multiple committees were formed to address existing conditions and proposed improvements. In addition to the responsibilities I had in leading the Task Force I also led the Finance Committee whose responsibility was to determine how much all this was going to cost and how it could be paid for with no new taxes.
About a year later a list of twenty-three improvements that needed to be made a primary part of the goals for downtown Scottsdale was presented to the city council.
Subsequently I was told by an upper-level staff person that embracing a citizen developed set of recommendations of this scope was unheard of in the government planning world. The implication was it went far beyond Scottsdale.
Some time later I was told, by a senior staff member, that twenty-one of the twenty-three recommendations had either been implemented or were in the process of being implemented. A major fallout of this was that two of the Task Force members, on their own money, traveled to Washington, D.C. and talked to a public service group, who was already involved in a condemnation suit in Arizona, about coming to Scottsdale to induce the city to remove the Redevelopment designation on the Canal bank. Removal of the Redevelopment Designation was one of the twenty-three points of the proposal. At the encouragement of the Institute for Justice the City Council voted to remove the Redevelopment designation.
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My background, knowledge, creative abilities, management skills and the objective goal of improving Downtown Scottsdale enabled me to identify relevant issues, then coordinate and provide support for the efforts of all those involved in the Task Force to create a cohesive and workable set of interrelated solutions. The solutions were embraced by downtown property owners, downtown merchants, those involved in tourism and the citizens of Scottsdale.
© 2017 Sam J. West, Architect
